Pharmaceutical globalization and biological citizenship: notes on the implementation of post-exposure prophylaxis in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Abstract

Based on a multicenter ethnographic field survey on the implementation of post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, this article discusses aspects of micropolitics in the supply of “new preventive technologies” based on the concepts of pharmaceutical globalization and biological citizenship. Combined prevention suggests the joint use of behavioral, biomedical, and structural strategies to confront HIV, but on the margins of this policy’s co-construction, actions by health services in Rio Grande do Sul showed a profound fragmentation of this combination in the network, prioritizing access to medication. Stimulated by a scenario of pharmaceutical globalization, the way PEP is accessed and supplied to users encourages a biological citizenship that involves the right to prevention, in this case through the individual right to consume the medication. However, access to this right is permeated by moral conditioning factors linked to risk categories and by the users’ social context, reproducing inequalities in health and impoverishing the counseling approach. The article discusses the need for combined prevention strategies that strengthen the approach of social and program dimensions in the epidemic, which will also bolster the attention to individual vulnerabilities from the perspective of comprehensive health.