Igualdades e dessimetrias: a participação política em ONGs HIV/AIDS do Canadá e do Brasil / Similarities and dissimilarities: political participation in NGOs/AIDS from Brazil and Canada

As ONGs/AIDS desde o início da epidemia são lugares de acolhimento e de pressão política, propiciam alternativas de convivência social para as pessoas que convivem com o HIV/AIDS. Através da experiência dos participantes de uma ONG brasileira e de outra canadense, este estudo teve o objetivo de discutir a participação política como um processo em constante construção, condicionada por fatores psicossociais, contextualizados histórica e culturalmente. Através da análise de documentos, questionários e entrevistas baseado na Hermenêutica de Profundidade de John Thompson (1995), pudemos perceber que em ambas as ONGs desencadeia-se um processo de politização da AIDS a partir da ajuda ao próximo e das troca de experiências. Todavia na ONG brasileira este processo acontece através de um envolvimento mais intenso com a dinâmica institucional e comunitária, tendo como objetivo a conquista e consolidação de direitos, enquanto que a ONG canadense constitui-se um espaço através do qual cada participante individualmente acessa direitos já consolidados no país.

Since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have been important places for harboring people that live with HIV/AIDS because they feel welcomed and supported to fight for their rights. By studying the experiences of participants of a Brazilian NGO and a Canadian NGO, this study discussed the political participation as a process which is associated with psychosocial factors, historically and culturally contextualized. We could perceive that, in both NGOs, the politicization process of AIDS started from the perspective of helping other people and sharing experiences related to HIV/AIDS, through the analyze of documents, questionnaires and interviews, based on Hermeneutic of Depth by John Thompson (1995). Yet, in the Brazilian NGO the politicization process occurred through a more intense institutional and community dynamics, with the objective of achieving their rights, while the Canadian NGO represents a setting through which the participants individually accessed their rights already consolidated in the country.

The Roman Catholic Church and environmental politics in Brazil.

PIP: For most of its history the Roman Catholic Church's position on the environment has been that resource use is a God given right and an appropriate solution to the problems of human need. This has been especially true in Brazil ever since the 16th century. Since the end of military rule in 1985, the church as been very active in the area of social justice and has therefore been more likely to adopt the position that the earth is a gift from God that we must not abuse. This new Christian asceticism however does not mean that the church has turned around. Clearly, the church is no enemy of the environmentalist movement. It has condemned profit driven development by the government and large agrobusiness in its support of native people and small landholders. It has done a lot of social and political work through its base eccesial communities (CEBs) in terms of infrastructural improvement and land reform. The church has consciously and unconditionally worked to counter the forces within Brazil that have been ravaging the environment. It must be understood however that the church is not preservationist or antidevelopmentalist. The church has been using its power to obtain social justice which includes the equitable use of available resources as the primary means of serving social needs. Thus human needs takes priority over environmental concerns and this is a result of an indigenous socioreligious imperative.^ieng

The effect of education on nurses' perception of AIDS.

This paper examines changes in health care workers' perceptions of AIDS accruing from attempts at professional enlightenment. Based upon a 4-month study of 60 registered nurses enrolled in a bachelor of nursing programme, it investigates alterations in knowledge and attitudes resulting from intense instruction on AIDS and AIDS patient care as part of a class in epidemiology. Contrary to what much of the literature has suggested to this point regarding knowledge enhancement and attitudinal transformation, the research reveals a number of positive changes to have occurred over the period of the study. Not only were the nurses better informed about AIDS than previously, but their attitudes towards the disease and patient care had become considerably more liberal.

Knowledge and perception of AIDS among Canadian nurses.

Within the growing literature on AIDS, relatively little attention has been paid to the public's knowledge and perception of the disease. Even less is known about nurse's understanding of, and attitudes towards AIDS, even though in large part, the treatment and care of AIDS patients rests in their hands. As a partial corrective to this deficiency, this study offers a comparative examination of AIDS-related beliefs and attitudes held by nursing practitioners and nursing students in Canada. Briefly stated, what the research reveals is that Canadian nurses are less than fully informed about the disease and have over-cautious attitudes towards the care of AIDS patients. Among nursing students, lack of information is also a serious problem, although this group does tend to view AIDS patient care in a somewhat more liberal manner. It is apparent from these results that more attention needs to be paid to enhancing knowledge of, and changing attitudes towards, AIDS in the education of Canadian nurses.