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In this document, we present to the scientific community a proposal on how to deal with the challenge imposed on surveillance and health actions in Brazil regarding monkeypox, including points and directions that have the potential to support learning and enable advances in the current scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the history of HIV prevention for gay and other men who have sex with men in relation to public health policy and the role of LGBT and AIDS-related social movements in Brazil. An interpretive study was undertaken informed by philosophical and phenomenological hermeneutics. It included interviews with policymakers, researchers and activists involved in HIV and AIDS, especially HIV prevention among gay and other men who have sex with men. Prevention initiatives were analysed with a focus on the social and programmatic aspects of vulnerability to HIV, and advances and setbacks in the Brazilian response to the epidemic. The recent crisis in HIV prevention triggered by a growing conservatism in Brazilian politics and the current government's LGBT-phobia pose barriers that compromise issues of profound importance with regards to policy on HIV and AIDS: namely, engagement with human rights and social participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The HIV epidemic has had a widespread impact on global scientific and cultural discourses related to gender, sexuality, and identity. ‘Male sex workers’ have been identified as a ‘key population’ in the global HIV epidemic; however, there are methodological and conceptual challenges for defining inclusion and exclusion of transgender women within this group. To assess these potential implications, this study employs self-critique and reflection to grapple with the empiric and conceptual implications of shifting understandings of sexuality and gender within the externally re-created etic category of ‘MSM’ and ‘transgender women’ in epidemiologic HIV research. We conducted a sensitivity analysis of our previously published meta-analysis which aimed to identify the scope of peer-reviewed articles assessing HIV prevalence among male sex workers globally between 2004 and 2013. The inclusion of four studies previously excluded due to non-differentiation of cisgender male from transgender women participants (studies from Spain, Thailand, India, and Brazil: 421 total participants) increased the overall estimate of global HIV prevalence among ‘men’ who engage in sex work from 10.5% (95% CI 9.4–11.5%) to 10.8% (95% CI 9.8–11.8%). The combination of social science critique with empiric epidemiologic analysis represents a first step in defining and operationalising ‘reflexive epidemiology’. Grounded in the context of sex work and HIV prevention, this paper highlights the multiplicity of genders and sexualities across a range of social and cultural settings, limitations of existing categories (i.e. ‘MSM’, ‘transgender’), and their global implications for epidemiologic estimates of HIV prevalence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When HIV prevention targets risk and vulnerability, it focuses on individual agency and social structures, ignoring the centrality of community in effective HIV prevention. The neoliberal concept of risk assumes individuals are rational agents who act on information provided to them regarding HIV transmission. This individualistic framework does not recognize the communities in which people act and connect. The concept of vulnerability on the other hand acknowledges the social world, but mainly as social barriers that make it difficult for individuals to act. Neither approach to HIV prevention offers understanding of community practices or collective agency, both central to success in HIV prevention to date. Drawing on examples of the social transformation achieved by community action in Australia and Brazil, this article focuses on this middle ground and its role in effective HIV prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious beliefs have had a key role in shaping local responses to HIV and AIDS. As the world's largest Catholic country, Brazil is no exception. Yet little research has been conducted to document how religious doctrine is enacted in practice among its lay leaders and followers. In this article, we present ethnographic research from Recife, Brazil, conducted to understand the way in which religious doctrines are interpreted at a local level. Contextualised within the sociology of contemporary Brazilian Catholicism, we draw on interviews with clergy members, lay leaders, and parishioners to discuss how the Catholic Church's vision of sexuality translates into everyday lives of its followers. We explore the disjuncture between the Catholic ideals of fidelity and delaying sex until marriage with the everyday reality of the Church's followers, highlighting the role that gender plays in defining sexual roles and expectations. We conclude by posing questions for future research and HIV prevention strategies considering the formal institutional response of the Brazilian Catholic Church to AIDS on the one hand, and the social and cultural contexts in which Catholics live their daily lives on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This analysis focuses on the evangelical Protestant responses to drug use and HIV prevention, treatment and care in the urban periphery of Rio de Janeiro. We question how religious institutions, and the positions of pastors, create or reduce various elements of societal illness and vulnerability. We aim to show that the views of pastors may symbolise a form of social regulation that may have a meaningful social impact on drug use and HIV and AIDS. The interviews of 23 evangelical religious leaders were collected. Two case studies of evangelical drug rehabilitation centres (DRC) are derived from five qualitative interviews. Evangelical DRC generally reflects pastors' discourses of reintegration into social networks including marriage, family and employment. We found important differences in the discourses and practices in private versus state-funded rehabilitation centres that may reveal ways social and programmatic vulnerabilities may affect the efficacy of public health interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an ethnographic analysis of Afro-Brazilian religious responses to the HIV epidemic in Recife. Drawing on participant observation and in-depth interviews conducted with Afro-Brazilian religious leaders and public health officials, it highlights the importance of the axe - a mystical energy manipulated in religious rituals that is symbolically associated with blood, sweat and semen. In an analysis of the relationship formed between the state AIDS programme and Afro-Brazilian religious centres, we conclude that the recognition of native categories and their meanings is one of the key elements to a fruitful dialogue between public health programmes and religious leaders that in the case studied, resulted in the re-signification of cultural practices to prevent HIV. Although the Afro-Brazilian religious leaders interviewed tended to be more open about sexuality and condom promotion, stigma towards people living with HIV (PLHIV) was still present within the religious temples, yet appeared to be more centred upon the perception of HIV as negatively affecting followers' axe than judgement related to how one may have contracted the virus. We discuss the tensions between taking a more liberal and open stance on prevention, while also fostering attitudes that may stigmatise PLHIV, and make suggestions for improving the current Afro-Brazilian response to the epidemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Casa Fonte Colombo (CFC) is a religious organisation that assists people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). The funding for its activities comes from public sources such as the Brazilian National STD/AIDS Program as well as the Catholic Church. Capuchin (Franciscan) priests run the CFC and it has an extensive group of volunteers made up mostly of women. Between 2006 and 2009, we observed daily life at the CFC and interviewed priests, volunteers, employees, service providers, and clients. We also attended meetings, group sessions, and celebrations. Everyday actions carried out by the CFC reveal the efforts to resolve the tension between the position of the Catholic Church and the Brazilian state in the politics of AIDS. These efforts affirm that the CFC presents itself as a space where the position of the Catholic Church, as much as the politics of public health, are re-worked, giving way to a progressive act of Catholic prevention and assistance for AIDS that we call 'theology of prevention'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Brazil’s national response to AIDS has been tied to the ability to mobilize resources from the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and a variety of donor agencies. The combination of favorable political economic opportunities and the bottom-up demands from civil society make Brazil a particularly interesting case. Despite the stabilization of the AIDS epidemic within the general Brazilian population, it continues to grow in pockets of poverty, especially among women and blacks. We use resource mobilization theories to examine the role of Afro-Brazilian religious organizations in reaching these marginalized populations. From December 2006 through November 2008, we conducted ethnographic research, including participant observation and oral histories with religious leaders (N = 18), officials from the National AIDS Program (N = 12), public health workers from Rio de Janeiro (N = 5), and non-governmental organization (NGO) activists who have worked with Afro-Brazilian religions (N = 5). The mobilization of resources from international donors, political opportunities (i.e., decentralization of the National AIDS Program), and cultural framings enabled local Afro-Brazilian religious groups to forge a national network. On the micro-level, in Rio de Janeiro, we observed how macro-level structures led to the proliferation of capacity-building and peer educator projects among these religious groups. We found that beyond funding assistance, the interrelation of religious ideologies, leadership, and networks linked to HIV can affect mobilization. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Religious institutions, which contribute to understanding of and mobilization in response to illness, play a major role in structuring social, political, and cultural responses to HIV and AIDS. We used institutional ethnography to explore how religious traditions-Catholic, Evangelical, and Afro-Brazilian- in Brazil have influenced HIV prevention, treatment, and care at the local and national levels over time. We present a typology of Brazil's division of labor and uncover overlapping foci grounded in religious ideology and tradition: care of people living with HIV among Catholics and Afro-Brazilians, abstinence education among Catholics and Evangelicals, prevention within marginalized communities among Evangelicals and Afro-Brazilians, and access to treatment among all traditions. We conclude that institutional ethnography, which allows for multilevel and interlevel analysis, is a useful methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study develops a historical review of the meanings of the "flesh" in the West, focusing on its significance in the context of Christianity. Our hope is that a study along these lines can help to illuminate current understandings of questions related to sexuality both within and outside of the religious contexts found in contemporary Brazil. Such questions are of special interest for those who are concerned with both old and new problems found in the field that has come to be known as sexual and reproductive rights, with implications for the field of Public Health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the study which aims to examine the impact of religious discourses of exclusion and inclusion to the people in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The study which was conducted for 2 years uses an ethnographic observations of institutions and religious events. Results of the comparison between the 3 major religious denominations which include the Roman Catholic, Afro-Brazilian, and evangelical Protestant revealed a diversity of discourses on the same-sex sexual desires.

The article focuses on the success of Brazil in responding to HIV and AIDS. The country's National Program on Sexually Transmitted Diseases and AIDS (PNDSTAIDS) is said to be as one of the most progressive governmental AIDS programs in the world. The author claims that the program is characterized by a high degree of openness and has changed perceptions about the potential for HIV/AIDS treatment in resource-poor settings. One of the social movements that sought to respond to the HIV/AIDS epidemic is the sanitary reform movement in public health.

The Brazilian National AIDS Program is widely recognized as the leading example of an integrated HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment program in a developing country. We critically analyze the Brazilian experience, distinguishing those elements that are unique to Brazil from the programmatic and policy decisions that can aid the development of similar programs in other low- and middle-income and developing countries. Among the critical issues that are discussed are human rights and solidarity, the interface of politics and public health, sexuality and culture, the integration of prevention and treatment, the transition from an epidemic rooted among men who have sex with men to one that increasingly affects women, and special prevention and treatment programs for injection drug users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the relationship between homosexuality and adolescence in Brazil. Distinction between the different systems of sexual meanings that have structured the experience of same-sex relations; Ways in which the systems have affected same-sex desires and practices during youth; Emergence of gay subculture.

The article examines the impact of civil society and political mobilization in the formation of HIV and AIDS programs and policies for the health system of Brazil. It states that response of Brazil to HIV and AIDS is widely recognized worldwide which was considered as one the country's relative successes. It notes that social and political movements toward the issue influenced the health policies of the area. It adds that civilian organizations contribute a lot to the country's health system.

Abstract: The HIV epidemic has raised important tensions in the relationship between Church and State in many parts of Latin America where government policies frequently negotiate secularity with religious belief and doctrine. Brazil represents a unique country in the region due to the presence of a national religious response to HIV/AIDS articulated through the formal structures of the Catholic Church. As part of an institutional ethnography on religion and HIV/AIDS in Brazil, we conducted an extended, multi-site ethnography from October 2005 through March of 2009 to explore the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Brazilian National AIDS Program. This case study links a national, macro-level response of governmental and religious institutions with the enactment of these politics and dogmas on a local level. Shared values in solidarity and citizenship, similar organizational structures, and complex interests in forming mutually beneficial alliances were the factors that emerged as the bases for the strong partnership between the two institutions. Dichotomies of Church and State and micro and macro forces were often blurred as social actors responded to the epidemic while also upholding the ideologies of the institutions they represented. We argue that the relationship between the Catholic Church and the National AIDS Program was formalized in networks mediated through personal relationships and political opportunity structures that provided incentives for both institutions to collaborate. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this document, we present to the scientific community a proposal on how to deal with the challenge imposed on surveillance and health actions in Brazil regarding monkeypox, including points and directions that have the potential to support learning and enable advances in the current scenario.

According to current global AIDS guidelines, HIV testing is key to the success of the 'treatment as prevention' (TasP) strategy and the control of AIDS. In view of Brazil's commitment to these guidelines, this article characterizes the principles and justifications underpinning TasP and discusses implementation challenges. The analysis draws on a systematic review of the literature (2005 to 2015) on recruitment and testing strategies for men who have sex with men. This approach was adopted based on the assumption that current knowledge on HIV testing can offer valuable insights into the foundations of global AIDS policies and their uptake in local contexts. Based on the analysis of the 65 articles selected, we suggest that TasP represents a shift in the AIDS prevention paradigm. There is an overlap between prevention and care and the new approach places major emphasis on biomedical and psychological knowledge. The TasP approach fails to address the factors associated with HIV vulnerability and the stigma surrounding AIDS and undermines the participation of activists and PLWHA as autonomous producers of preventive of preventive practices. We argue that, to ensure the effective implementation of TasP in Brazil, it is necessary to discuss issues such as the protection of human rights and the structural problems facing Brazil's public health system.

This article analyzes the responses of Afro-Brazilian religions to the Aids epidemic in Recife, taking into consideration the religious symbolic structure. Drawing on participant observation and in-depth interviews conducted with Afro-Brazilian religious leaders and public health officials, it highlights the importance of "axé" _ the native category used to interpret corporal events _ in order to understand the history of Aids in this religious community. Axé is mystical energy, corporal vitality. It is manipulated in religious rituals and is symbolically associated with blood, perspiration and semen. In these times of HIV, the body scarification rituals and exchanges of fluids during sexual exchanges are the ways by which axé circulates among adept and are the core elements for its promotion, though they have also become a means for the transmission of the HIV virus. These elements were the basis of the dialogue between religious institutions and the public health system. This process generated changes in religious practices for regulation of social reproduction and the sexual life of the adepts.

The HIV epidemic has had a profound impact on how we think about, talk about, and carry out research on sexuality. The epidemic opened up a wide range of approaches and methodologies within sexuality research, helping to encourage more open public discussion and debate concerning sexuality, sexual values, and sexual norms. Sexuality became one of the key contested spaces of public discourse in a previously unimaginable way, and both conservative and progressive forces have entered the debate in ways that have had a lasting impact on sexual policies in the last two decades. The current article seeks to briefly evaluate some of these important changes. It suggests that recent advances have decelerated or become more timid, while emphasizing the continued importance of seeking to address sexuality as a central issue within the context of HIV and AIDS. Although such developments may have been unintended, the ways we respond to the epidemic can have a significant impact (for better or worse) on how issues related to sexuality and sexual health are addressed.