Brazil calls on EU for help in purchasing vaccines and medicines

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Brazilian ambassador to the European Union, Marcos Galvão, on Thursday, April 15th, advocated vaccination in the fight against the pandemic and asked for support from the European bloc to purchase more immunizers and medicines in short supply in the South American country. The appeal was made during a meeting of the European Parliament Delegation for relations with Brazil.

“Faced with the situation, our humanitarian, health and economic priorities need to focus on vaccines. There is no other way out of this disaster affecting everyone. It is a race against time to save many lives in Brazil and millions in the world,” said Galvão at the meeting called by members of the European Parliament to discuss the situation of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil.

Speaking about the vaccination campaign, Galvão said that the country is able to vaccinate 2.4 million people per day. “If there were enough Covid-19 vaccines available we could vaccinate our population faster,” he stressed.

The ambassador also said that the federal government would have signed contracts to purchase enough doses to immunize the entire Brazilian population throughout this year and argued that the slow vaccination experienced in the country is a common problem worldwide, which would be occurring partly due to delays in the delivery of vaccines and raw materials for their production.

Bolsonaro’s resistance

However, Galvão failed to mention Jair Bolsonaro’s resistance to signing contracts for the purchase of vaccines during the past year. Initially, the government bet all its chips on the immunizer developed by the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and Oxford University, which have a partnership with Fiocruz. The president also tried to sabotage parallel initiatives of vaccination and fighting the disease by governors and mayors in response to his government’s inertia in the issue.

In October, the president categorically stated that he would not buy the Chinese Coronavac vaccine – in a clear clash with São Paulo governor João Doria (PSDB), who promoted the development of the Sinovac vaccine in partnership with the Butantan Institute. Currently, more than 80% of the doses applied in the country are Coronavac.

The vaccine developed by the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the German biotechnology company Biontech was at the center of a public fight between Pfizer and the Presidential Administration. For months, Bolsonaro criticized and refused to sign the contract offered by the company.

In his speech, Galvão acknowledged the current seriousness of the health crisis in the country and presented a panorama with the current pandemic numbers in Brazil, as well as data on the emergency aid, highlighting that despite the reduction in the value of the benefit for the round foreseen this year, the measure “will still be significant”. He also defended the Unified Health System (SUS) and called on the European Union’s support to acquire medicines, especially those used for patient intubation, and oxygen that are in short supply in the country.

Brazil is facing the worst moment of the coronavirus crisis, with an explosion in the number of cases that has led to the collapse of the health system in several states. Deaths from Covid-19 have also been rising in recent months and have been breaking constant daily records. The disease has killed over 361,000 people in the country.

Criticism from Members of the European Parliament

The federal management of the coronavirus crisis was criticized by MEPs during the debate. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Bolsonaro has downplayed the disease, which he even described as a minor flu in a television statement. He also advocated ineffective treatments and opposed the use of masks, confinement, and social distancing – measures considered fundamental by the World Health Organization (WHO) to contain virus transmission. The president also attended several events without masks and prompted crowds on several occasions.

“What is happening in Brazil is a tragedy that could have been prevented. This tragedy is based on wrong political decisions by the Bolsonaro government,” said German Green Party MEP Anna Cavazzini, vice-chair of the European Parliament Delegation for relations with Brazil.

Prior to the meeting, Cavazzini had blamed the federal government’s “disastrous policies” for the serious situation faced in Brazil. “By encouraging crowds, opposing measures such as contact restrictions and lockdowns, and neglecting to purchase vaccines, Bolsonaro bears responsibility for the catastrophic situation in Brazil.”

Spanish MEP Miguel Urbán Crespo of the Left Group said that the health crisis Brazil is experiencing has political causes, the responsibility for which lies with the current federal government. “Instead of declaring war on the coronavirus, Bolsonaro has declared war on science, medicine, and life,” he stressed.

Crespo also criticized the law passed by Congress and sanctioned by the president that allows the purchase of vaccines against Covid-19 by private companies, which, according to him, should lead to increased prices of vaccines and will benefit only a few. “By action or omission, Bolsonaro’s necropolitics is a crime against humanity, against the Brazilian population,” he stressed.

Spanish MEP Clara Aguilera from the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats group, also found the approval of legislation allowing private companies to purchase vaccines worrying, and said that this type of measure could have a worldwide impact on the prices of vaccines.

When answering MEPs’ questioning, Galvão refrained from commenting on the criticism and said that Brazil has strong institutions capable of investigating and analyzing the question about responsibilities for alleged errors and omissions in the pandemic.

“We are talking about lives here, let’s leave politics for later. We are not going to save lives today, tomorrow, next week, if we get into a debate that is already happening and will continue to happen. My mission here is to ask you to use your political influence to support a country that has the capacity not only to save itself, but also to help others, because we are industrially strong in vaccine production,” said the ambassador.

Changes in vaccine distribution criteria

Other participants in the debate were Veronique Lorenzo, director of the South America department of the European External Action Service, the diplomatic service of the EU; Sylvan Aldigheri and Socorro Gross Galiano, representatives of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and Camila Asano, program director of Conectas.

In their speech, Aldigheri and Galiano advocated changes in the vaccine distribution criteria by the global consortium led by the WHO Covax Facility so that more doses are sent to the Americas, especially to Brazil. According to them, several countries in the region, especially those in the Southern Cone, are facing a worrying increase in the number of Covid-19 cases, with the spread of the Brazilian coronavirus variant in at least 19 of them.

“For the first time in history, Brazil is facing a collapse in the healthcare system. The country is at the epicenter of the pandemic right now,” said Galiano, the PAHO representative in Brazil. She pointed out that the situation is critical, with shortages of medicines, intubation kits, oxygen and beds. According to her, 10 states have 95% of their ICU beds occupied.

The director of the human rights NGO Conectas criticized the federal policies to fight the pandemic. According to Asano, the Brazilian government’s response can not only be defined by incompetence or omission. “There were proactive measures that did not protect the population and increased the speed of transmission of the virus,” he said, exemplifying with Bolsonaro’s veto of a law passed by Congress that determined the mandatory wearing of masks in public places and the president’s initial refusal to negotiate the purchase of vaccines.

Asano also said that Bolsonaro has waged a campaign against public health by spreading fake news and information without any scientific evidence, encouraging the use of drugs without proven effectiveness, such as hydroxychloroquine, refusing to buy vaccines, and downplaying the pandemic.

“Instead of fighting with all his strength to contain the pandemic, Bolsonaro has increased attacks against democratic institutions, journalists, and civil society,” Asano stressed. “We no longer live in a situation of democratic normality, we ask that the European Parliament continue to closely monitor this situation,” he added.

Source: DW