Trans/Travesti/+: PrEP in specialized services before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract

Objective: To understand the perceptions and experiences of transsexual and travesti women and non-binary or gender-fluid people (TGWT+) in health services where they took pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in the periods before and during the pandemic, focusing on the resignification in the relationship with services and the continuity of HIV prevention via PrEP.

Methods: Qualitative research and analysis of empirical material generated in the context of broader studies were conducted. A total of 45 semi-structured interviews were conducted with TGWT+ PrEP users in the city of São Paulo and analyzed using iterative thematic content analysis.

Results: The TGWT+ interviewees gave new meanings to their struggles, daily lives and ways of caring for their health and played a central role within them. With its particularities, the COVID-19 pandemic became one more event among all the others that TGWT+ face daily. Alongside the COVID-19 pandemic, the TGWT+ were faced with the HIV epidemic, but with the possibility of prevention via PrEP.

Conclusion: Based on a situated and conscious perspective, more explicit in the context of the health crisis, the TGWT+ intertwined conscious actions and care practices in dialog with health services. Further research on these groups from a spatiotemporal dynamic situated in specific contexts of meaning production would make it possible to advance prevention and care strategies, especially in times of health crisis.