The Brazilian response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic amidst the crisis

"Crisis" is a phenomenon that is part of global and local policies with social, political, and economic repercussions. It is the context of this paper that aims to reflect on the Brazilian response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. We examined the realms of this phenomenon, such as the review of the consensus on austerity policies, their impact and the construction of "anti-agendas" that hinder the narrative of human rights, gender, sexuality, and health and hamper HIV/AIDS prevention and care. Such a conservative move can be associated with censorship of specialized materials and the recent change of management in the structure of the Ministry of Health, the extinction of hundreds of participatory councils within the Executive Branch and the new National Policy on Drugs that replaces the guidance "harm reduction" with one of "abstinence". All these phenomena revive an old concern, that is, that the "ideological virus" will outweigh the biological virus, exacerbating the situation of stigma and discrimination. Besides the neoliberal socioeconomic orientation that threatens the Brazilian state, such facts would affect the continuity of institutional responses to HIV/AIDS.