From AIDS to Zika

October 10, 2017

In May 2017, a small team from the CSIS Global Health Policy Center visited Brazil to better understand the country’s approaches toward issues of global health security. This includes preventing and responding to infectious disease outbreaks, bolstering pandemic preparedness capacities in the region, strengthening Brazil’s national disease surveillance network, scientific and technical collaboration, and health preparations in advance of mass gatherings. Based on our conversations in Brazil and in the United States, the team concluded that the history of U.S.-Brazil engagement on health, as well as Brazil’s recent experiences addressing the 2015–2016 Zika outbreak and preparing for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, offer important lessons for the U.S. government to consider, both as it rethinks its relationships on health with other middle-income countries and as it advances its health security agenda in the years to come.