Entrando na ciranda: aids, infâncias e políticas públicas em saúde no Brasil

Abstract

The present master’s degree research starts with the view according to which there are certain specificities related to the aids theme, which are configured from elements such as class, sexuality, gender, race, territory and generation, involving processes of social hierarchization of the epidemic. With the goal of investigating the discourses which are related to the public health care policies in Brazil aimed to the issues of aids in the childhood and of analyzing the knowledge/power devices which constitute the statements and positions of the subject of childhood with aids, we find support in the theoretical references of Michel Foucault, which allows the analysis of how the discourses produce positions of subject, operating by means of complex power relations. Among epidemiologic indexes which guide public health care policies, there is a current concern with the incidence of aids in women, pointing to the Vertical Transmission of HIV as a priority in terms of prevention policies. However, when it comes to public policies aimed specifically to the childhood that lives with HIV/aids, there is an invisibility and a silencing, which, according to the analysis perspective of the present research, delegates positions of subject hierarchized in the scope of the public health care policies on HIV/aids in Brazil. The methodological outline contemplates the documental research and the Discourse Analysis of Foucaultian reference. The data production source is composed of official documents which gather the public policies and articulately enunciate childhood and HIV/aids. They are, therefore, public domain documents available at the Brazilian Health Ministry’s website, which are reference to the categories of research analysis. From the documental analysis we have observed that there are different positions of childhood when it comes to aids, that is, a childhood which is, at the same time, enunciated as target of public policies, even before their serologic status is known and, on the other hand, as a childhood who lives with HIV/aids, which, however, is no longer targeted by public policies.. Such position of child invisibility as a subject of rights, as well as the enunciation of this “no-place” to childhood living with HIV/aids in the public health care policies in Brazil produce effects of social and programmatic vulnerability in the scope of public health care policies aimed at this slice of the population. Therefore, it is valid to foment initiatives which take into consideration the critical and propositive questioning in the realm of public health, considering that the discourses enunciate childhood and aids in the childhood, also fabricate the public health care policies and reverberate practices and knowledge.