Brazil's HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention program may be in jeopardy, some experts say

Jun 14 2012

The Miami Herald reports on Brazil's national HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention program, writing, "By the mid-1990s, more effective and powerful antiretroviral therapies replaced the older treatments, and in 1996 Brazil declared that it would offer free antiretroviral treatment to all citizens with AIDS." However, "the controversial program -- the government broke international patent laws to mass-produce the drugs at a lower cost and recruited sex workers to help distribute condoms -- may not survive for long, experts say," the newspaper continues.

"AIDS activists fear that costs will rise for the Brazilian government as patients on the life-saving treatment live longer than they did in the past, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS," the Miami Herald notes. "Richard Parker, an American medical anthropologist and the president of the Brazilian Interdisciplinary AIDS Association, also says there's less support from the government under President Dilma Rousseff than there was under her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, better known as Lula," the newspaper writes. "The issue is that Brazil had, clearly, what was a model for the response to AIDS in the developing world," Parker said, adding, "That model program is now in jeopardy," according to the newspaper (Minemyer, 6/12).