Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP)

PEP, or Post-Exposure Prophylaxis is a medicine taken to prevent HIV after a possible exposure. PEP must be started within 72 hours of possible exposure to HIV. Talk to your health care provider, an emergency room doctor, or urgent care provider, an emergency room doctor, or urgent care provider as soon as possible about PEP if you think you’ve recently been exposed to HIV.

Common exposure situations can include:

• Failure of prevention methods during sex
• Sharing needles, syringes or other equipment to inject drugs
• Sexual assault

The sooner you start PEP, the better. Every hour counts. If you’re prescribed PEP, you’ll need to take it daily for 28 days.

PEP is for Emergency Situations

• PEP is given after a possible exposure to HIV.
• PEP is not a substitute for regular use of other HIV prevention.
• PEP is not the right choice for people who may be exposed to HIV frequently.
• If you are at ongoing risk for HIV, such as through repeated exposures to HIV, talk to your health care provider about PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis)

Undetectable = Untransmittable

People with HIV should take medicine to treat HIV as soon as possible. HIV medicine is called antiretroviral therapy, or ART. If taken as prescribed, HIV medicine reduces the amount of HIV in the body (viral load) to a very low level, which keeps the immune system working and prevents illness. This is called viral suppression—defined as having less than 200 copies of HIV per milliliter of blood. HIV medicine can even make the viral load so low that a test can’t detect it. This is called an undetectable viral load.

Getting and keeping an undetectable viral load is the best thing people with HIV can do to stay healthy. Another benefit of reducing the amount of virus in the body is that it prevents transmission to others through sex or syringe sharing, and from mother to child during pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding.

More on PEP

More on ART

Local Resources