ABSTRACT
In Brazil, as elsewhere, the transmission of HIV has taken place above all else through sexual contacts. For a variety of reasons that have already been examined (see, for example, Chapters 1 and 4 in this volume), heterosexual transmission, in particular, has increased rapidly in recent years. At the same time, same-sex relations between men have nonetheless continued to be central to the epidemiology of AIDS in Brazil, accounting for nearly half of the total number of AIDS cases reported in the country as a whole. And although the relative importance of homosexual transmission, visà-vis heterosexual transmission, has fallen rapidly, the incidence of HIV infection, as well as cases of AIDS, among men who have sex with men in Brazil, have nonetheless continued to climb (Ministério da Saúde, 1992).
