SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – After weeks of public bickering over how to handle the Covid-19 pandemic, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro finally fired the country’s Health Minister, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, on Thursday afternoon, April 16th. Bolsonaro announced as his replacement the oncologist Nelson Teich, who analysts say has a considerable experience in the private sector, but not much in the public health system.
“It will be sort of a trap for him,” said Ricardo Sennes, Managing Partner at Prospectiva Consultoria, during a webinar by the Atlantic Council on Thursday afternoon, minutes after the announcement.
“Unlike Mandetta, who has ample experience in managing the bureaucracy that is involved in public health legislation, he (Teich), although an important figure in the private sector, has little experience in public health,” adds Sennes.
Born in Rio de Janeiro, Nelson Teich obtained his specialization in oncology at the National Cancer Institute (Inca). The doctor served as an informal consultant for Bolsonaro during the 2018 presidential campaign and his name was on the initial short-list for Bolsonaro’s Health Minister. He was backed by Economy Minister, Paulo Guedes, but Mandetta was chosen instead.
Currently, he is a partner at Teich Health Care, a medical services consultancy.
In his first speech after the announcement, he said he was fully in line with the strategies of President Bolsonaro of how to deal with the pandemic.
“Let me make it clear that there is a complete alignment here between me, the president and the entire cabinet group. Really, what we are doing here today is to work so that society can resume a normal life more and more quickly and we work for the country and for society,” said Teich.
On the other hand, Teich said that social distancing will remain for the time being.
“There will be no sudden, radical definition of what will happen. What is fundamental today? That we have more and more information about what happens to people with each action that is taken,” said Teich.
For the new Minister of Health, Brazil must ‘know the disease better’ and economics and health don’t ‘compete with each other’. For Teich the key action now is to increase testing.
“To know the disease, we must have a testing program. It is essential that we have an assessment of what this disease is today “, he affirmed. During the last update of testing by the Ministry of Health, on April 13, the entity reported having distributed to the states just over one million rapid test kits for a total country population of over 210 million.
For some, however, Teich is likely to ease up on social distancing and stay-home requests; something that the former Health Minister stressed on a daily basis on national TV.
“He said he will be aligned with Bolsonaro. (Which means) as soon as he possibly can he loosens the isolation measures, leading to the collapse of health services and the unnecessary death of thousands of people, concentrated in the most vulnerable population,” Renato Tasca, coordinator of health systems and services unit at the Pan American Health Organization/WHO, tells The Rio Times.
Others say we will have to wait and see what Teich will ultimately do. “Are we going to have a minister whose decisions are based on international health protocols, or is he being put in to fill Bolsonaro’s discourse,” asks Hussein Kalout, a Political Scientist and Research Scholar at Harvard University.
As for vaccines and medicine for Covid-19, Teich said that these will be treated in a technical and scientific way. The minister did not mention the drug chloroquine, encouraged by Bolsonaro and one of the points of conflict between the President and Mandetta. Bolsonaro also did not mention the drug during his speech on Thursday.
During the announcement Bolsonaro, called the exoneration of Mandetta a ‘consensual divorce’.
“It was actually a consensual divorce. Because above me, as president, and him as minister, is the health of the Brazilian people,” said Bolsonaro.
As one of biggest proponents of social distancing and supporting state governors’ decisions to shut down schools and businesses, former Minister Mandetta had openly gone against President Bolsonaro, who downplayed Covid-19 as nothing more than the sniffles and stated that people would first die of hunger if stay-at-home and lockdown orders were issued by states.
“I do not condemn, I do not recriminate and I do not criticize Minister Mandetta. He did what, as a doctor, he thought he should do,” said Bolsonaro, speaking next to Teich. The president added that the ex-minister should have understood the entire situation, especially that of the effects on the economy and unemployment.
During his speech, Bolsonaro noted that the opening up of the cities and allowing shops and business to re-open was discussed with Teich.
“Along with the virus came a real machine for grinding jobs. The humblest people began to experience the problem first. These cannot stay at home for long. So, it is not what we would like to do, it is what can be done. We could not harm those most in need. They cannot stay at home for long without looking for their food. And the first to suffer from this were the informal workers,” said Bolsonaro.