Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Brazil has one of the developing world's largest, and arguably most successful, AIDS treatment programs. In this paper we review the treatment program, including controversial policies that Brazil has used to promote widespread local and global access to AIDS treatment. We also examine the lessons learned from this program and highlight the challenges Brazil faces, including the rising costs of AIDS treatment and changes in donors' funding priorities.
Finally, we explore the relevance of Brazil's treatment program for other countries and its broad implications for global AIDS and health policy.
Since the s, Brazil has implemented HIV education and prevention campaigns, including nationwide condom distribution and HIV testing, as well as prevention campaigns targeting vulnerable populations such as sex workers, injecting drug users, and men who have sex with men MSM. Brazil's accomplishments won international acclaim and are credited with dramatically reducing AIDS-related mortality and morbidity, including mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Here we examine lessons from Brazil's experience, explore implications for responding to the AIDS pandemic elsewhere, and highlight future challenges.
Our findings are empirically grounded in ninety-one interviews, a review of more than 2, Brazilian news articles since , and other historical information. Brazil has a concentrated epidemic: in HIV prevalence is 0. Prevalence in Brazil's rural areas remains very low.
Although AIDS prevalence and incidence continue to rise in Northeastern Brazil and among vulnerable populations such as men who have sex with men, the urban poor, and injection drug users, the epidemic has largely stabilized. Brazil has implemented diverse strategies for securing AIDS drugs. It also passed the Industrial Property Law, which brought Brazil into compliance with World Trade Organization WTO rules requiring middle-income and least-developed countries to introduce local intellectual property IP regulations by and , respectively.
