One of the world's most successful AIDS programmes faces new problems
BRAZIL'S government is accustomed to being lampooned for being wasteful, ineffectual and corrupt. Occasionally, though, it does something really well. Keeping HIV/AIDS under control in a country where sex rivals football as the national sport is an impressive achievement, and over the past 20 years the government has done just that. Now, however, the disease has spread across Brazil (see maps). Although the total number of cases remains low at 620,000, representing 0.6% of those aged 15-49, the change in the profile of sufferers is taking the fight to places where it will be much harder to win.
"The ...