WeeklySA_AdminPROTECTION: For Soweto sex worker Maleshoane Chaka, lenacapavir offers much-needed protection against HIV — but misinformation remains a challenge as South Africa expands access…
By Siyabonga Kamnqa
Thirty-year-old Maleshoane Chaka carries her 18-month-old daughter on her back as she listens attentively to speakers inside a quiet hall.
The discussion touches on an issue close to her heart: preventing HIV infection and the protection offered by lenacapavir (LEN).
For Chaka, a sex worker based in Chiawelo, Soweto, the twice-yearly HIV prevention injection offers hope in circumstances where negotiating condom use can be difficult.
Speaking to Weekly SA Mirror, Chaka said she had been working as a sex worker since 2023.
“I come from a very impoverished community faced by joblessness. As a result, young people like myself are roaming the streets without any hopes. After searching for a job without any luck I decided, following also the passing of both my parents, to sell my body,” she said.
Chaka, who finds male clients at shebeens, said she feared contracting HIV because some clients were unwilling to use condoms.
“I get different clients. One will even pay you more, just to break the condom rule. And I have no choice but to oblige because I need the money,” she said.
She believes LEN could go a long way towards reducing new HIV infections.
The medication is a long-acting antiretroviral used as pre-exposure prophylaxis, commonly known as PrEP, to help protect people who do not have HIV from acquiring the virus. Administered twice a year, it offers an additional prevention option.
During a media workshop on HIV prevention hosted by the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism in Sandton, Gauteng, this week, health experts, journalists and LEN users discussed the injection’s role in preventing HIV.
Addressing the gathering, Professor Saiqa Mullick, director of Implementation Science at the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute, discussed how LEN works as an antiretroviral medication.
President Cyril Ramaphosa and Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi launched the national rollout on June 5, 2026. According to the Department of Health’s September progress report, LEN had been rolled out through 360 public health facilities across 24 districts in six provinces.
At Rahima Moosa Wellness Clinic in Johannesburg, a senior nurse described how misinformation and advice received outside the clinic could undermine patients’ care.
“What we have seen is that patients don’t normally follow our instructions once they walk out of our doors.
One patient, for example, after being injected with LEN on the abdomen, went home and upon feeling pains, she was advised to take a cabbage leaf and warm it and then put it on the lumps. And the patient felt more pains,” she said.
