Aids in Brazil
Read MoreAmazillio dos Santos, HIV positive, lies in bed at a Catholic Church support house for HIV and AIDS patients in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in this photo taken November 9, 2000. dos Santos is one of 14 men and nine orphan children living at the house, founded six years ago to help paitient carry on with their lives in spite of a terminal disease. A top U.N. official said an AIDS epidemic is ravaging Latin America this week at an AIDS conference this week in Rio. But Brazil, the largest Catholic country in the world with more than 70 percent of its 165 million people claiming to Catholic, drew praise for its handling of the disease during the conference. The Federal government supplies a free "cocktail" of anti-AIDS drugs to 90,000 victims, and AIDS deaths in Brazil were cut in half between 1996 and 1999. Some 540,000 Brazilians, or 0.57 percent of the population are registered as HIV-positive.(Australfoto/Douglas Engle)
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