A comparative study of South African and Brazilian HIV and AIDS rates and policies
HIV and AIDS are still affecting many people in Brazil, South Africa and across the world, even though much has been done to mitigate against its further spread. Often Brazil and South Africa are compared to each other because of their economic position in the world and also because of their similar political histories. This research compares the Brazilian and the South African HIV and AIDS National Strategic prevention policies and it also aims to find out why the HIV and AIDS prevalence rates took significantly different patterns in the respective countries. The study includes a policy comparison and qualitative in-depth interviews with 14 organisation directors whose main focus is HIV prevention in Brazil and South Africa. The mains findings revealed that one of the main reasons for the different prevalence rate in both countries was because the civil society in Brazil played a major role in pressurizing the government to respond to the pandemic, while in South African the civil society did not play a major role. The Brazilian government thus started responding to HIV at least 9 years before the South African government did. Also, the Brazilian National HIV and AIDS prevention policy has an action plan for each goal, while the South African Policy does not have action plans for their goals. The Brazilian policy is also decentralized to municipal level, while the South African policy is decentralized only to Provincial level. Another finding was that in Brazil the NGO sector was directly involved in formulating the policy while in South Africa the NGO sector was not. In Brazil the respondents had a good knowledge and understanding of the policy, while in South Africa the respondents did not have a good knowledge of the policy. In Brazil NGOs have formed partnerships between themselves in order to deliver better services and to make their voices stronger when pressurising the government. Respondents in Brazil also knew what other organisations were doing. In South Africa organisations did not know what other organisations were doing and the NGOs did not have strong partnerships between themselves.
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