New government must maintain AIDS prevention

Consistent with the ideological view of the ideas championed by President-elect Jair Bolsonaro during the election campaign, the ministers made ultraconservative proposals in various fields. If this protects the future government from accusations of electoral fraud – as has been done by the Toucans and the Petites – it guarantees lively debates on key issues for people's lives. And this also justifies fears about new policies that may arise.

One of the problems that is already receiving the attention of experts is, in public health, the prevention of HIV / AIDS to control and reverse the spread of AIDS.

Sexually transmitted diseases, also prevalent among injecting drug users, are surrounded by retrograde bans that, if implemented in public policies, will be fatal to the success of the Brazilian AIDS strategy, a world recognition work.

The first statements of the Minister of Health, the orthopedist Luiz Henrique Mandetta, on this subject caused fears of failures. Describing the thought of the president-elect, Mandetta said he is unhappy with the effectiveness of prevention and education campaigns conducted in schools and public health networks.

The future minister repeats what has become a Bolsonaro mantra, namely that sex education is the sole prerogative of families and that the state has nothing to do with it. In other words, educating children and young people, as appropriate, not to become victims of sexually transmitted diseases will be out of the question for the next four years.

However, the state also has the function of providing adequate information, especially to young people, on how to guard against these diseases, including AIDS, because not all families have the conditions to do so.

To remove, therefore, the public power of this circuit is imprudent, because that would increase the risk of contamination. In young people, signs of infection are detected, largely because of the relaxation caused by the relative effectiveness of anti-retroviral cocktails.

Scientific success has led to a dangerous neglect of HIV. It is also for this reason that public and educational enlightenment campaigns must continue to be conducted, contrary to what the future Minister of Health discovers.

The free distribution of the cocktail since 1996 is one of the factors guaranteeing the success of the Brazilian program. In the past four years, for example, according to the Ministry of Health, the AIDS mortality rate has decreased by 16.5%, from 5.7 to 1,000. Prejudice can not turn that success into failure.