‘If you drink, do not have sex’: questioning the discourses in the offer of Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP)

Abstract

Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) for HIV is a biomedical technology, offered in cases of sexual violence and occupational accidents since the early 2000s, with its offer expanded to situations of consensual sexual relations after 2010. Despite being classified as biomedical, its offer and execution is mediated by relational technologies, permeated by socially constructed meanings. This study aimed to question the discourses produced on the offer of PEP among health workers. The research is inspired by Michel Foucault’s genealogical perspective, based on the need to problematize power relations in the discourses and knowledge of health professionals who work with the implementation of PEP in a medium-sized city in the central region of Paraná. Twelve interviews were carried out with managers of the HIV/AIDS policy and workers in the services that offer PEP. The discourses about the PEP are discussed, highlighting both the right to access and expansion of preventive possibilities and the prescriptive discourses permeating and constraining its offer. In conclusion, it is pointed out the necessity to qualify the access to PEP, affirming it as a practice of freedom.