BRAZIL: Lula rejects US 'aid' for AIDS

On May 3, Brazil's government rejected a $40 million grant from the US to fight AIDS, explaining that its conditions were "too severe". The grant was conditional on Brazil's government taking a "moral" stand opposing, among other things, prostitution. Brazil has around 700,000 AIDS-infected residents. Prostitution is legal in Brazil, and the government has an anti-AIDS strategy that focuses on working with sex workers, intravenous drug users and gay men, and involves distributing hundreds of thousands of free condoms and providing free access to AIDS drugs for the infected. Head of the prevention program Pedro Chequer wrote a letter to the US government explaining that Brazil had stabilised the infection rate, and the conditions imposed with the US aid would damage its effective program. The University of California, Los Angeles released a 10-year-long study last year that found AIDS infection in legal brothels was significantly lower than in illegal ones.

From Green Left Weekly, May 11, 2005.

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From GLW issue 626