Brazil’s HIV advocates say they predicted USAID funding cuts: ‘We would see the trends’

A woman shows how an HIV self-test kit works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on July 07, 2017. Brazil started selling, for the first time, HIV detection tests in pharmacies nationwide. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

HIV advocates from Brazil, whose health system operates independently from foreign aid, say they predicted a dramatic reduction in donor funding for HIV and wish other countries had prioritized independence sooner.

While the dissolution of USAID might “feel like a rupture”, it’s something advocates at the Brazilian HIV NGO Gestos have seen coming for a long time, Juliana Cesar, Gestos’s political liaison coordinator, said during a session at the Aids 2026 conference in Rio de Janeiro.