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STORY: UNAIDS / HIV AIDS SOUTH AFRICA ZIMBABWE
TRT: 11:04
SOURCE: UNAIDS
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / SHONA / NATS
DATELINE: JUNE 2026, PHILIPPI VILLAGE, CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA / JUNE 2026, SECUNDA, MPUMALANGA PROVINCE, SOUTH AFRICA / FEBRUARY 2026, HARARE ZIMBABWE
JUNE 2026, PHILIPPI VILLAGE, CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA
1. Aerial shot, village
2. Close up, sign Desmond Tutu Health Foundation Clinical Research site
3. Wide shot, Parking lot where HIV prevention mobile clinics have been set up
4. Wide shot, exterior mobile clinic
5. Wide shot, NGO Align staff chatting outside mobile clinic
6. Wide shot, entrance of a mobile clinic under awning
7. Wide shot, nurse with a patient, door open with sign saying “FAST PrEP – don't delay, get
protected today”
8. Med shot, nurse with patient inside mobile clinic
9. Med shot, patient holding a PrEP flyer
10. Close up, flyer “LEN injection”
11. Close up, PrEP handbook
12. Close up, Lenacapavir subcutaneous box
13. Close up, lab material for injections
14. Close up, test tubes and needles
15. Med shot, nurse setting up injection
16. Med shot, nurse wearing disposable gloves prepping needle and lenacapavir injection
17. SOUNDBITE (English) Zimasa Zwide, Nurse, Philippi Village Mobile Clinic:
“There is a prevalence of gender-based violence (GBV) where young women are being assaulted and most of them are being exposed through the sexual assault. So, we encourage them to be protected at all times so that even if you get raped, at least in terms of HIV, you are safer.”
18. Close up, needle
19. Med shot, nurse injecting patient in left thigh
20. SOUNDBITE (English) Mbali Jonas, Communication Coordinator, Desmond Tutu Health Foundation:
“There's quite a lot of excitement within the community. Len injection has been recognized as a game changer in responding to the HIV epidemic, particularly also for young people, because it provides you with discreteness.
21. Close up, injection in thigh
22. Med shot, nurse puts cotton pad on patient’s thigh post injection
23. Med shot, nurse putting cooling pad where injection took place
24. SOUNDBITE (English) Mbali Jonas, Communication Coordinator, Desmond Tutu Health Foundation:
“You get two injections a year and you are good to go.”
25. Wide shot, exterior Philippi Village
26. Wide shot, health and HIV prevention meeting participants led by Sive Mphambaniso, Youth Engagement leader, Desmond Tutu Health Foundation
27. Wide shot, participant asking a question to Mphambaniso
28. Wide shot, Mphambaniso addressing group “
28. Wide shot, four women with hands up
29. Close up, one of the women taking Lenacapavir
30. Close up, another woman taking Lenacapavir
31. Various shots, participants discussing Lenacapavir
32. SOUNDBITE (English) Sive Mphambaniso, Youth Engagement leader, Desmond Tutu Health Foundation:
“When I go to the community, some people, when I tell them about these things, they're quite shocked, you know, and I believe like they are not as well informed as they should be. Because some people are just participating in sex, they don't know what happens or what are the repercussions of having unsafe sex. And all these methods that we have, many of them they do not know about.”
33. Various shots, exterior of Desmond Tutu Health Foundation, Cape Town
34. Close up, indoors with Desmond Tutu logo
35. SOUNDBITE (English) Linda Gail Bekker, Director, Desmond Tutu HIV Centre:
“It raises a big question. This is a country where 8 million people live with HIV. We still see about 180,000 infections every year. We need to get PrEP to many more people than 450,000. And so, we are going
to have to be selective in who gets Lenacapavir.”
36. Med shot, Bekker speaking
37. SOUNDBITE (English) Linda Gail Bekker, Director, Desmond Tutu HIV Centre:
“So, it's the kind of last mile phenomenon that as we begin to close the epidemic down, you have to actually offer the prevention to many, many more people. And so that does create a big question around
sustainability. So, to my mind, the only way we're going to be able to do this is if we really get the most cost-effective, scalable, affordable price.”
JUNE 2026, SECUNDA, MPUMALANGA PROVINCE, SOUTH AFRICA
38. Wide shot, exterior clinic
39. Wide shot, crowd awaiting the President of South Africa and Health Minister to arrive at
clinic for Lenacapavir launch
40. Wide shot, event stage
41. Wide shot, the President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, speaking
42. SOUNDBITE (English) Cyril Ramaphosa, President, South Africa:
“Health security can no longer be separated from economic development. The capacity to develop, to
manufacture, and to distribute medicines is essential to our sovereignty, our resilience, and our prosperity. So, let us be clear, Lenacapavir is not a silver bullet. It is one more powerful tool in our arsenal.”
43. Pan right, event
44. SOUNDBITE (English) Daniel O’Day, Chief Executive Officer, Gilead Sciences:
"Lenacapavir is the first new HIV medicine of its kind to reach sub-Saharan Africa in the same year that it was approved in the United States. It's never been done before. And this is something that we at Gilead were intent on achieving as soon as we knew how effective Lenacapavir could be in ending HIV.”
45. Close up, UNAIDS Country director, Alankar Malviya
46. SOUNDBITE (English) Alankar Malviya, South Africa Country Director, UNAIDS:
“It provides us one of the most effective ways of protecting young people against new infections however given that this will be rolled out in a phased manner, it’s important to consider that this is part of the many tools that we have to prevent new infections in combination with condoms, oral PrEP and other methods to reach the desired goal of ending AIDS by 2030.”
47. Med shot, President of South Africa with Minister of Health holding up Lenacapavir medicine boxes
FEBRUARY 2026, HARARE ZIMBABWE
48. Wide shot, entrance of Epworth Clinic
49. Wide shot, staff sitting at a table in front of a mobile clinic
50. Wide shot, line of booths distributing flyers and other materials
51. Med shot, people questioning a nurse at an outdoor booth
52. Med shot, young woman sitting getting blood pressure checked by nurse
53. Close up, arm
54. Wide shot, people queuing outside mobile clinic for lenacapavir
55. Med shot, Wilbert Marindere walking into mobile clinic
56. Med shot, female nurse with Wilbert giving him information
57. Close up, female Nurse filling out paperwork
58. Med shot, Wilbert lying down for injection in the leg
59. Close up, male nurse wearing surgical gloves filling up vial with lenacapavir injection
60. Close up, injection in leg
61. Med shot, male nurse putting a cotton pad and removing needle
62. SOUNDBITE (Shona) Wilbert Marindere, Patient:
“I came here to get this injection because I am a truck driver doing long cross-border trips.
I think it’s important to protect oneself from HIV with this new injection medicine.”
63. Wide shot, table with condoms, HIV self-test kits and pill boxes
64. Close up, HIV self-test kits
65. SOUNDBITE (English) Esnath Gwezuva, Patient:
“I am really happy because this injection will keep me from acquiring HIV. I encourage other Zimbabweans to do the same to lower the number of new HIV infections. That will also reduce deaths from this disease.”
66. Wide shot, Zimbabwe Health Minister, Douglas T Mombeshora, and other officials with big lenacapavir medicine box with red ribbon
67. Tilt up, medicine box and Health Minister holding up brochures
68. Med shot, young women wearing pink Lenacapavir t-shirts
69. Close up, young woman smiling
70. Close up, woman holding up a flyer “All about Lenacapavir”
71. SOUNDBITE (English) Douglas T. Mombeshora, Minister of Health, Zimbabwe:
“New HIV infections continue to occur, especially among adolescent girls and young women and other populations at increased risk. This tells us something important: prevention must fit into real life. If a health solution is too complicated, too demanding, or too visible, people simply won't use it. That is why innovation in prevention matters. Lenacapavir represents a new way of doing things. It responds to a simple reality: Not everyone finds it easy to take a pill every day.”
72. Close up, young woman lying down in mobile clinic office for injection
73. Med shot, woman lying down for injection
74. SOUNDBITE (English) Richard Amenyah, Country Director, Kenya, Rwanda, and South Sudan, UNAIDS:
"We need close to over 20 million people globally accessing long-acting antiretrovirals for prevention. And so, if the discussion now is about just getting 3 million people within two years, that is just a drop in the ocean, so the potential is huge, and we need to make sure that the pricing, politics, and all that needs to be eliminated. Have more generics out there for people and the voluntary licensing, making it easy.”
75. Wide shot, exterior Mutala Trust clinic
76. Close up, IDRL sign (Infectious Disease Research Laboratory)
77. Med shot, female technician with lab coat and gloves piping liquid into a test tube
78. Wide shot, female technician prepping test tubes for testing
79. Med shot, female technician
80. Med shot, technician filling small test tube
81. Med shot, technician placing tube in testing machine
82. Close up, machine
83. Wide shot, technician taking samples out of a big cryofreeze
84. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tariro Madadzange, Epidemiologist, Chief Executive Officer, Africa Clinical Research Network, Founder, Mutala Trust Network:
“Developing vaccines particularly in Africa needs us to understand the immune genes that determine how you and I respond to infections.”
85. Med shot, technician
86. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Tariro Madadzange, Epidemiologist, Chief Executive Officer, Africa Clinical Research Network, Founder, Mutala Trust Network:
“Having studies, early phase studies done on the continent really enables us as scientists, clinicians,
researchers on the continent to develop therapies and vaccines that are tailored to our needs and our population.”
87. Close up. technicians placing vials in another cryofreeze type contraption
A twice-yearly injectable antiretroviral medicine has been rolled out in nine countries so far in Africa. Lenacapavir (known also as Sunlenca or Yeztugo) has shown to be more than 96 percent effective at preventing HIV.
The drug is a pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medicine that has the potential to bolster HIV prevention because it allows people to choose a method that they prefer (injection over pills.) To date deliveries have reached South Africa, Eswatini, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Many are already implementing the roll out to people at higher risk of HIV including adolescent girls and young women, pregnant women, and key populations including men who have sex with men and sex workers.
This medicine is a gamechanger however in South Africa where 8 million people live with HIV and there were up to 170,000 new HIV infections last year, 450 000 doses cannot cover the demand.
The twice-yearly injectable antiretroviral medicine has been rolled out in Zimbabwe- one of the first countries to do so globally. The country is rolling out the medicine to people at higher risk of HIV including adolescent girls and young women, pregnant women, and key populations including men who have sex with men and sex workers.
HIV prevalence in Zimbabwe is 11.2 percent with new HIV infections in 2025 reaching 14,000. About 3.5 adolescent girls (15-24 years old) were infected for every 1 adolescent boy.
This medicine has the capacity of being a gamechanger, however demand may outpace supply. UNAIDS stresses that reaching 20 million people with antiretroviral-based HIV prevention options, including lenacapavir, by 2030 is critical to reduce new HIV infections, which remain unacceptably high at an estimated 1.3 million per year globally.
There is no cure for HIV, but antiretrovirals (pills or injections) keep a person healthy, leading a normal life. HIV vaccine research is ongoing, and the Mutala Trust in Zimbabwe became the first clinical site to administer initial doses of the investigational GRAdHIVNE1 HIV vaccine candidate (funded by the Gates Foundation.)
UNAIDS continues to support countries and communities on the ground by helping to align policies to ensure access, affordability, and availability of this HIV prevention drug and other innovations.
UNAIDS is supporting countries and communities on the ground to ensure access, affordability, and availability of this HIV prevention drug and other innovations. Other HIV prevention methods exist like the pill form of PrEP and condoms. Condoms reduce the incidence of HIV and sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies. UNAIDS has also been urging for expansion of licensing to additional manufacturers, particularly in Africa, to ensure sustainable and affordable supply at scale.
