Bloomberg: Brazil’s AIDS Fight Falls Victim to Success
Mac Margolis, author

“…Data from the public health ministry released early this month shows that AIDS — a scourge Brazil appeared on track to beat — is on the rise among some demographics (young men) and regions (the north and northeast). … Independent research conducted in Rio de Janeiro also indicated alarming rates of HIV infections among vulnerable and neglected groups … Brazil sorely needs to reboot its strategy. Fortunately, health bureaucrats are quickly, if belatedly, overhauling their prevention protocols. … Now the health ministry is preparing to blitz social media with slick safe-sex messages, and reintroduce campaigns for reproductive health in the classroom that had been suspended … ‘We’ve never had so many tools to combat HIV and AIDS as we do today,’ said [Mario Scheffer, a public health expert at the University of Sao Paulo]. All that’s needed now is to put these tools to use … and keep the country inoculated against the deadly scourge of complacency” (12/15).