“An HIV Patient Is an Expense for Everyone Here in Brazil,” Says Bolsonaro

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – President Jair Bolsonaro decided to speak out about the government’s campaign that encourages sexual abstinence as a prevention for premature pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

As he left the Alvorada Palace on Wednesday morning, February 5th, Bolsonaro said that an HIV patient is an expense for everyone in Brazil.

“A person with HIV, in addition to having a serious problem, is an expense for everyone here in Brazil,” said the president, who reported as an example the case of a young woman who purportedly had her second child at age 15 and who contracted HIV during her third pregnancy.

And once again, Bolsonaro used the Workers’ Party as a justification for her actions. According to the president, the sexual abstinence program was established because “this freedom acquired throughout the PT government that anything goes leads to this point, a total depravation”.

The program which Bolsonaro mentioned is designed by the Minister of Women, Family and Human Rights, Damares Alves, along with the Ministry of Health. The initiative has no scientific backing and therefore should not be implemented, according to the federal and São Paulo State Public Defender’s Offices.

The defenders’ recommendation is that the ministries do not carry out the campaign, which is scheduled to begin in February, the month of Carnaval. In addition to the lack of scientific evidence, the entities argue that the ineffectiveness of this kind of initiative has already been proved by national and international research.

In the United States, where policies of sexual abstinence have existed for almost 40 years, studies have not demonstrated a drop in adolescent pregnancy rates, much less in the spread of sexually transmitted diseases from the recommended late onset of sexual activity.

Source: Carta Capital