'Yes, we are culturally more open to discussing sex. This is real,' said Paulo Teixeira, former director of the STD/AIDS Program in the Brazilian Ministry of Health and keynote speaker at a Harvard conference. Staff photo Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office |
Battling AIDS in Brazil: A message of hopeMarch 27, 2007By Ken Gewertz
An upbeat conference on AIDS? Hard to imagine, unless you'd attended "The Brazilian Response to AIDS" on March 22, sponsored by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. True, Brazil has had its share of AIDS deaths, but they are far less than expected in the early days of the epidemic. In the early 1990s, the World Bank predicted that by the year 2000, there would be 1.2 million people in Brazil infected with HIV. But by 2005, there were only 600,000 infected, and the death rate from AIDS has been stabilized at 6.3 per 1,000. Moreover, people living with AIDS receive far more effective, compassionate, and consistent care in Brazil than in almost any other country in the developing world. At the daylong conference, a group of scholars, students, and health workers presented their views on why Brazil has been so successful in dealing with this devastating disease. |
