World AIDS Day in Brazil
Today is World AIDS Day, and there are celebrations around the world to raise awareness. There was a slightly odd but really interesting special on MTV Brazil surveying people in Brazil, Mexico, and Jamaica about AIDS, sexual health, women's rights, and poverty, and basically trying to show that all over Latin America and the Caribbean, the major causes of the spread of HIV are lack of education, poverty, lack of women's rights, lack of cooperation by governments, stereotypes and taboos, and lack of access to contraceptives.
Globo has an interesting article about Brazil's HIV programs, which are some of the most revered in the world. Brazil has about a 0.7% prevalence rate, with around 660,000 people living with AIDS. Though this is not the highest prevalence rates in the Americas, it's one of the highest incidence rates, since Brazil has such a huge population. But unlike many other Catholic and conservative countries in the region, Brazil has historically taken a pragmatic and powerful view on fighting the disease, distributing condoms at Carnaval and other public functions and doing campaigns meant to have a real impact. Recently, Brazil started making its own generic HIV drugs to try to reduce costs and to provide free HIV medications for nearly all of Brazil's HIV-infected. However, a recent Harvard study indicates that the program may be a victim of its own success, as anti-retrovirals in the rest of the world decrease in price and the Brazilian-made generics rise in price.
On a related note, I wanted to do a little special about the UN Human Development Index rankings, and I still have a bunch of articles saved to talk about. For the first part, let's just talk about how the rankings ended up. The rankings measure a great number of things, including health, education, sanitation, safety, governance, and others. You can see the complete list here at the UN site. This year, the study divided countries into 70 countries of "high human development," 84 "medium human development" countries, and 21 "low human development" countries. Brazil was overjoyed to be in the "high" list, granted it came in dead last on the highly developed countries. The top 10 most developed countries this year were:
1. Iceland
2. Norway
3. Australia
4. Canada
5. Ireland
6. Sweden
7. Switzerland
8. Japan
9. Netherlands
10. France
Other countries of interest that came in on the highly developed list were the United States (12), the UK (16), Portugal (29), Argentina (38), Chile (40), Uruguay (46), Costa Rica (48), Cuba (51), Mexico (52), and Panama (62). Brazil was #70, right behind Russia, Albania, and Macedonia. Other Latin American countries wound up on the medium developed list including the DR (79), Colombia (75) and Ecuador (89).
