NYC-based HIV activists Jason Walker and Emily Sanderson think that, just like the cost of rent, pre-exposure prophylaxis PrEP is too damn expensive. To address the cost of accessing PrEP, they are among a group of activists who launched #BreakThePatent, a campaign advocating to make the generic form of Truvada (FTC/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) available in the U.S. or to greatly reduce the price of the Gilead drug so that communities most in need can have access to it. They sat down with TheBody at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam to discuss the white paper they recently launched, detailing their national plan of action for universal PrEP access in the U.S.

Terri Wilder, M.S.W.: So, this is an exciting week. You have just released a National Action Plan for universal access to PrEP in the United States. Start out by just telling me a little bit about what is PrEP4All, and then, we'll dive right in, talk about the National Action Plan and what's in that.

Emily Sanderson: So, PrEP4All is a group that started when we realized that Gilead Sciences was withholding PrEP due to pricing from people who needed it most to prevent HIV. And we realized that most of the research that was done to develop PrEP was done with American taxpayer money, and then Gilead came in and bought the patent.

We formed this group so that we could inform people and change the policy and change the access to Truvada as PrEP.

TW: In the United States, the pricing is very different from maybe other parts of the world.

ES: Yes. In the U.S., it costs on average $1,600 a month to fill a one-month prescription of PrEP. But, in other countries, it is cheaper to access because drug companies know that they can make a lot of money off people in the United States, because we're a high-income country.

TW: Great. So, yesterday at the conference, you guys had a press conference. You released your National Action Plan for universal access. Talk to me a little bit about this National Action Plan.

Jason Walker: Our National Action Plan is really a call to get different folks who are impacted, communities who are impacted by the HIV/AIDS crisis, to come together to put public pressure on Gilead and the [National Institutes of Health](NIH) to ensure that we have generic drugs that come onto the market so that we can provide options for folks who want to take preventative HIV medication.

Our whitepaper is really just outlining how we got here, how we got to a place where folks cannot access Truvada. It's essentially a call to action to get communities together so that we can organize, so that we can strategize, so that we can build our collective power to put public pressure on Big Pharma, so that we can make sure that we have an accessible biomedical prevention strategy for high-impact communities.

TW: It sounds like, at the foundation, [in the U.S.], the prices are higher, and Gilead's application to the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] (FDA) for PrEP indication for Truvada was not funded by Gilead but, rather, by U.S. taxpayers.