Profile of the Brazilian projects for technical cooperation on Aids in the world: a look into potential study hypotheses

Abstract

A few decades ago Brazil became involved in technical discussions about the global response to the Aids epidemics, and assumed an important role for its cooperation and as global public opinion maker on the subject. Despite this characteristic, the predominant profile of these projects remains unknown and unexplored, making it difficult to analyze this potential correlation. This gap will be bridged by means of a study on Brazil’s international technical cooperation projects on Aids between 2002 and 2009, using the database of the International Cooperation Advisory of the Department of STD, Aids and Viral Hepatitis of the Brazilian Ministry of Health. The technique used to analyze these data was content analysis, in order to identify the predominant profile of the cooperation, and to propose hypotheses that will provide guidelines for future research. The study presented the distribution of Brazil’s cooperation projects on Aids in the world, and the content analysis made it possible to devise two hypotheses: within the given period, Brazil’s cooperation attempted to strengthen the responses of other countries to the HIV/Aids epidemic, and to project Brazilian policies for fighting the disease at a global level. These observations, on the other hand, point toward the need for and pertinence of new studies supported by the hypothesis of a strong alignment between the technical characteristic of these projects and the national external policy, the diplomacy of the Brazilian health, and the strengthening of global governance on Aids.