Antiretroviral Use for HIV Prevention During Pregnancy: The Need to Strengthen Regulatory and Surveillance Systems in Africa

HIV-prevention efforts focusing on women of child-bearing potential are needed to end the HIV epidemic in the African region. The use of antiretroviral drugs as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a critical HIV prevention tool. However, safety data on new antiretrovirals during pregnancy are often limited because pregnant people are excluded from drug development studies. Calls from communities, healthcare professionals, and regulators to improve the information supporting decision-making around the use of medical products during pregnancy have been increasing. Post-marketing safety surveillance is an essential tool for detecting adverse outcomes and evaluating real-world, longer-term effects of drugs. Detecting and evaluating uncommon pregnancy outcomes requires large sample sizes, highlighting the benefits of and need for safety surveillance. Surveillance systems vary widely across Africa, and the need for enhanced surveillance of PrEP use during pregnancy highlights the limitations of current regulatory and surveillance systems. Challenges include weak regulation and insufficient resources. Pooling of resources and regulatory harmonization could address resource challenges. The African Medicines Agency, as a specialized agency of the African Union, has the potential to improve African medical product regulation, including post-marketing safety surveillance. This can strengthen regulation and ensure that market authorization holders meet their responsibility to invest in post-marketing surveillance systems, such as pregnancy registries. At the same time, independent post-marketing studies are needed to ensure generation of essential safety data. The Forum for Collaborative Research has initiated a project to facilitate interactions between regulators in Africa, the USA, and Europe, as well as other stakeholders, and to work toward consensus on safety data generation from PrEP during pregnancy before and after marketing authorization.