At a historic moment for global health, new HIV prevention tools including Lenacapavir, with 96 to 100% efficacy in clinical trials open an unprecedented window of opportunity for adolescent girls, young women, and women around the world. But innovation without equity is not transformation.
Too often, biomedical breakthroughs reach the women who need them last, if at all. Structural barriers: gender-based violence, criminalisation, stigma, economic exclusion, and health systems that were never designed with women in mind, determine who gets access long before affordability does. Adolescent girls, young women, sex workers, women who use drugs, transwomen, and women with disabilities are consistently the last to benefit from scientific progress, despite facing the highest risks.
It is in this context that She Leads, She Decides was born: a regional programme driven by the Aidsfonds EmpowHer Initiative, working alongside local organisations in Zambia and Mozambique to ensure that women and girls, in all their diversity, not only have HIV prevention options available, but the real power to choose them. Because the goal is not simply access — it is agency. Not just tools, but the conditions in which women can use them freely, safely, and on their own terms.
What is LENACAPAVIR?
Check out infographics and share on your social media channels.
