Buhle Sikade has been using an HIV-prevention injection that gives her almost foolproof protection against contracting HIV through sex - medicine that other HIV-negative people in South Africa will be able to get from 360 government clinics for free from April. Here's what it's done for her and how it works.

For the past three years, Buhle Sikade, 22, has been using an injection - called lenacapavir (LEN) - that gives her almost foolproof protection against getting HIV through sex. About 456,000 other HIV-negative people in SA will be able to get the medicine from 360 government clinics for free from 1 April.

LEN is taken once every six months and injected into the fat under the skin on someone's tummy.

Sikade moved from Willowvale in the rural Eastern Cape to Masiphumelele, a township near Kommetjie in the Western Cape, in 2016. She and her brother came to stay with her aunt to look for jobs and "better opportunities".

It was in Masiphumelele, where one in four adults has HIV, that Sikade heard about a study for young HIV-negative women like her, which would test if LEN would keep them HIV-negative.

She joined the trial, Purpose 1, which kicked off in 2022, from the start. When the results of the study were announced in 2024 - not a single one of the 2,134 women who got LEN contracted HIV - she continued to use it, because the company which makes LEN will supply it free...