Tag: healthcare politics

French President Macron in SA for Talks on COVID

French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in South Africa today for talks with President Cyril Ramaphosa on a range of issues including possible technological assistance to aid South Africa’s response to the COVID pandemic.

On the agenda of the visit is the economic, health, research and manufacturing responses to the COVID pandemic.

Arriving from Rwanda, where he acknowledged France’s role in the 1994 genocide, Macron held talks in Pretoria with President Ramaphosa, whom he met last week in Paris at a summit on African economies.

The pair were also due to attend an event to support vaccine production on the continent, sponsored by the European Union, the United States and the World Bank. 

So far South Africa is the country worst hit by COVID on the continent as far available monitoring can determine, and has vaccinated just 1 percent of its population of 59 million people.

South Africa’s immunisation efforts have been hampered by delayed procurement, and then selling off its AstraZeneca vaccines obtained via Covax to other African countries after trial results showed drastically reduced effectiveness against the local B.1.351 variant. Rollout of the replacement Johnson & Johnson vaccine was paused for two weeks in April due to blood clot fears.

Now, along with India, South Africa is campaigning for a waiver of intellectual property rights on COVID vaccines, so that each country may produce its own doses. This effort has met with stiff resistance so far.

Macron has voiced support for a technology transfer to enable vaccine production sites to be set up in poorer countries.

Visit long delayed

Macron’s visit to South Africa has been long delayed due to the COVID pandemic.
The initial purpose for the trip had been to discuss multilateral cooperation with South Africa, an important G20 partner which is also a regular guest at G7 summits.

According to Foreign Policy, the French leader will also seek to establish greater influence in a region that is experiencing greater instability, marked by recent insurgencies in Mozambique.   

Jihadist attacks forced French energy giant Total to suspend work on a multi-billion euro gas project in Cabo Delgado province after a nearby town was targeted.

Before he returns to France, he will pay a visit to the Nelson Mandela Foundation, whose main missions are the fight against AIDS and education in rural areas.

Source: RFI

President Biden Orders Deeper Probe into COVID Origins

Photo by Giacomo Carra on Unsplash


US President Joe Biden has ordered intelligence officials to “redouble” their efforts in investigating the origins of COVID, as well as the theory that it was a ‘lab leak’ in China.

This comes days after details of a US intelligence report emerged in the Wall Street Journal, claiming that three doctors working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had fallen ill with COVID-like symptoms in November 2019 – about when epidemiologists believe SARS-CoV-2 first began circulating in humans. 

Mr Biden said the US intelligence community was divided on whether it was the result of a lab accident, or from jumping from human to animal. Mr Biden asked the groups to report back to him within 90 days.

China’s embassy in the US made a warning statement posted on its website, without mentioning the president’s remarks. “Smear campaigns and blame shifting are making a comeback, and the conspiracy theory of ‘lab leak’ is resurfacing.
“To politicise origin tracing, a matter of science, will not only make it hard to find the origin of the virus, but give free rein to the ‘political virus’ and seriously hamper international cooperation on the pandemic,” it said.

Authorities linked early COVID cases to a seafood market in Wuhan, leading scientists to theorise the virus first passed to humans from animals.

Why now?

In a White House statement released on Wednesday, President Biden said he had asked for a report on the origins of COVID after taking office, “including whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident”. He asked for “additional follow-up” on receiving the report.

Mr Biden said most of the intelligence community had “coalesced” around those two scenarios, but “do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other”.

The president has now asked agencies to “redouble their efforts to collect and analyse information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion”, and report to him within 90 days.

He concluded by saying the US would “keep working with like-minded partners around the world to press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence”.

Beijing meanwhile has previously suggested a possible US lab origin for COVID. The Chinese embassy said it supported a full investigation into “some secretive bases and biological laboratories all over the world”.

Mr Biden’s statement coincided with a CNN report that the president’s administration earlier this year shut down a state department investigation into a possible lab leak origin.

The ‘lab leak’ theory

When they first arose last year, the laboratory leak allegations were widely dismissed as a fringe conspiracy theory, with many US media outlets describing the claims as debunked or false after then-President Donald Trump said COVID had originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Two months ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a joint report with Chinese scientists on COVIDs origins, rating the likelihood of an accidental lab release as “extremely unlikely”. However the WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that he was not satisfied that the investigation had looked at this possibility enough to rate. The investigation only stirred up more interest in the ‘lab leak’ theory, with 18 scientists signing an open letter calling for more investigation before it could be ruled out.

There is little evidence for the ‘lab leak’ theory in the public domain however, and intelligence reports such as the one the Wall Street Journal based its story on are often of unproven provenance. 

Chief White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci still believes that COVID jumped from animals to humans, though this month he admitted he was no longer confident COVID had developed naturally.
Mounting pressure

Mr Biden’s statement comes the day after Xavier Becerra, US secretary for health and human services, urged the WHO to ensure a “transparent” investigation into the virus’s origins.

“Phase 2 of the Covid origins study must be launched with terms of reference that are transparent, science-based and give international experts the independence to fully assess the source of the virus and the early days of the outbreak,” Mr Becerra said.

On Tuesday, Mr Trump sought to take credit in an emailed statement to the New York Post, saying: “To me it was obvious from the beginning but I was badly criticised, as usual. Now they are all saying: ‘He was right.'”

Source: BBC News

Only 1 in 10 Getting Full Diabetes Care in Developing Countries

 Only 1 in 10 people with diabetes in low- and middle-income countries are getting evidence-based, low-cost comprehensive care proven to reduce diabetes-related problems, according to a study published in Lancet Healthy Longevity

That comprehensive package of care – low-cost medicines to reduce blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol levels; and counseling on diet, exercise and weight – can help lower the health risks of under-treated diabetes. Those risks include future heart attacks, strokes, nerve damage, blindness, amputations and other disabling or fatal conditions.

The authors analysed data from recent surveys, examinations and tests of over 680 000 people between 25 and 64 worldwide. More than 37 000 had diabetes; more than half of them had a key biomarker of elevated blood sugar but had not yet received a diagnosis.

The researchers have provided their findings to the World Health Organization, which is developing efforts to scale up delivery of evidence-based diabetes care globally as part of an initiative known as the Global Diabetes Compact. The forms of diabetes-related care used in the study are all included in the 2020 WHO Package of Essential Noncommunicable Disease Interventions.

“Diabetes continues to explode everywhere, in every country, and 80% of people with it live in these low- and middle-income countries,” said lead author David Flood, MD, MSc, a National Clinician Scholar at the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation. “It confers a high risk of complications such as including heart attacks, blindness, and strokes. We can prevent these complications with comprehensive diabetes treatment, and we need to make sure people around the world can access treatment.”

Flood worked with senior author Jennifer Manne-Goehler, MD, ScD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Medical Practice Evaluation Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, to lead the analysis of detailed global data.

In addition to the main finding that 90% of the people with diabetes studied weren’t getting access to all six components of effective diabetes care, the study also finds major gaps in specific care.

For instance, while about half of all people with diabetes were taking a drug to lower their blood sugar, and 41% were taking a drug to lower their blood pressure, only 6.3% were receiving cholesterol-lowering medications. Less than a third had access to counseling on diet and exercise.

These findings show the need to scale-up proven treatment not only to lower glucose but also to address cardiovascular disease risk factors, such as hypertension and high cholesterol, in people with diabetes.

“Diabetes continues to explode everywhere, in every country, and 80% of people with it live in these low- and middle-income countries. We need to make sure people around the world can access treatment.” David Flood, MD, MSc.

Even when the authors focused on the people who had already received a formal diagnosis of diabetes, they found that 85% were taking a medicine to lower blood sugar, 57% for blood pressure, but only 9% for cholesterol. Nearly 74% had received diet-related counseling, and just under 66% had received exercise and weight counseling.

Taken together, less than one in five people with previously diagnosed diabetes were getting the full package of evidence-based care.

Economy and availability of care

The researchers found that generally, the lower the average income of the country and region,  the less evidence-based diabetes care was available.

The nations in the Oceania region of the Pacific had the highest prevalence of diabetes – both diagnosed and undiagnosed – but the lowest rates of diabetes-related care.

However some low-income countries had higher-than-expected rates of good diabetes care, said Dr Flood. The Latin America and Caribbean region had the second highest diabetes prevalence, but had much higher levels of care than Oceania.

Finding out what the countries with high-performing achievements in diabetes care are doing well could provide valuable insights for improving care elsewhere, the authors said. That even extends to informing care in high-income countries like the United States, which does not consistently deliver evidence-based care to people with diabetes.

The study also highlights differences in diabetes diagnoses in different regions and countries. Access to diagnosis enables people to receive diabetes care.

Women, people with higher levels of education and higher personal wealth, and people who are older or had high body mass index were more likely to be receiving evidence-based diabetes care. Diabetes in people with ‘normal’ BMI is not uncommon in low- and middle-income countries, suggesting more need to focus on these individuals, the authors noted.

The fact that cheap diabetes-related medications are available, and that people can cut risk through lifestyle changes, mean that cost should not be a major barrier, said Flood. In fact, studies have shown that the medications are cost-effective as a preventative measure.

Source: University of Michigan

Journal information: David Flood et al, The state of diabetes treatment coverage in 55 low-income and middle-income countries: a cross-sectional study of nationally representative, individual-level data in 680 102 adults, The Lancet Healthy Longevity (2021). DOI: 10.1016/S2666-7568(21)00089-1

SA Medical Insurance Schemes in the Crosshairs

The Health Professions Council (HPCSA) said that South Africa’s new National Health Insurance (NHI) should be the sole funding mechanism for health in South Africa.

Addressing parliament on Tuesday, the president of HPCSA, Professor Simon Nemutandani, said that while the organisation accepts that the existence of private medical aid schemes in South Africa can continue, they should funded separately — over and above tax paid for the NHI.

The NHI itself should be funded through taxes paid by all employed South Africans, he said.

“For the NHI to succeed, health must be an exclusive national competence – and any sections of the Constitution that militate against this view must be amended,” the HPCSA stated.

“The Medical Schemes Act must also be amended to ensure alignment with the NHI. NHI should be about funding and contracting, while service provision is left to other entities — public and private.”

Prof Nemutandani said that the NHI Bill should repeal the Medical Schemes Act in its entirety, as the nationalised, centralised health funding system would have no place for it.

For those seeking additional insurance for health cover, they could apply for it under the Insurance Act. Medical schemes should also offer only complementary coverage for services that would not be covered by the NHI, he said.

Additionally, the current reserves of medical schemes — some R90 billion — and all other assets under their control should be transferred to the NHI, said Prof Nemutandani.

“It should be clear that the (NHI) replaces all funding mechanisms for health,” Prof Nemutandani said. “It must also be clear that the NHI is taking over from the medical schemes, and that all assets under the control of the medical schemes must be taken by over the NHI.”

Problematic aspects

The Board of Health Care Funders (BHF) said in its submission that current medical cover providers should be allowed to continue as insurance products. They also pointed out that a number of the Bill’s aspects are problematic, including a provision in the Bill transferring powers and duties of provinces to national government.

The BHF also expected there would be challenges from healthcare service providers and from members of the public over restrictions of their choices. Duplication of services and waste was another concern.

The NHI Bill was presented to and approved by cabinet in July 2019, and has been presented to parliament’s health portfolio committee.

Since then, it has been through an extensive public consultation process through committee roadshows and is scheduled for further parliamentary debates before being presented to the president for promulgation.

However, the Council for Medical Schemes has acknowledged that South Africa’s current financial situation and the impact of the COVID lockdown will make the rollout of the new NHI more difficult.

Source: BusinessTech

More information: Summary of all submissions (PDF)

Indian States Turn to Ivermectin Amid COVID Crisis

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

Two Indian states have decided to distribute the controversial anti-parasitic drug ivermectin as a preventative measure, MedPage Today reports.

Goa, on the west coast, and Uttarakhand, a northern state in the Himalayas, will give the anti-parasitic to wide swaths of their population as a preventative measure in hopes of preventing future outbreaks.

Leaders of both states insisted that their recommendations were evidence-based. “An expert medical panel has recommended this,” Om Prakash, chief secretary of Uttarakhand, told Reuters. Vishwajit Rane, health minister of Goa, also said an expert panel from Europe found the drug shortened recovery time and reduced the risk of death, the news agency reported.

Yet no large randomised controlled trial has proven the drug’s efficacy against COVID, and no prominent health group — the NIH and the WHO among them — has recommended the drug in treatment or prophylaxis.

The use of ivermectin for COVID has been the subject of bitter debate in South Africa, and human administration of ivermectin was approved for compassionate use with guidelines released in January. Following a court order, pharmacists and doctors in South Africa are allowed to make up small batches of medicines containing Ivermectin on prescription by a doctor and in small quantities, and can be used.

Madhu Pai, MD, PhD, professor of epidemiology and global health at McGill University in Montreal, tweeted a link to guidelines developed by collaborators in the UK and India, led by Cochrane and Christian Medical College Vellore in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

On May 15, the group updated their guidance to state that it recommends “against using ivermectin for treatment of patients with any severity of COVID-19. Ivermectin should only be used in the context of a randomized controlled trial.”

Officials in Goa said the state will give ivermectin tablets to anyone aged 18 or over. Through most of the recent COVID surge, the popular tourist destination has remained open to holidaymakers, only imposing a 15-day lockdown last week.

Meanwhile, Uttarakhand plans to distribute the drug even more widely, giving it to anyone over age 2, with the exception of pregnant and lactating women, according. The state has been struggling with high caseloads, which rose from under 300 a day in early April to more than 7000 a day last week, Reuters reported.

The state recently hosted Kumbh Mela, a huge festival which drew millions of people from across the country for a two week long celebration including bathing in the river Ganges. Reports indicated many people did not wear masks and were closely packed. This became a massive superspreader event, with cases all over India being traced to it. Some districts of Madhya Pradesh reported that 20% of cases were festival returnees.

Goa and Uttarakhand’s moves have not gone unnoticed by ivermectin advocates. The Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, a long time champion of the drug, paid scant attention to the difference between causation and correlation in a recent tweet on the issue: “Case counts and deaths are falling in India! A close look … shows that the declines occurred as the Health Ministry [sic] began its widespread distribution of #ivermectin.”

Source: MedPage Today

Only Total Alcohol Bans Relieve Pressure on SA Hospitals

A new study found that alcohol bans could be a sensible policy to help South Africa through new health crises, according to a study published on Monday.

Based on local hospital admission data, the authors said that their work demonstrates that “alcohol prohibition correlates with a decrease in health seeking behaviour for injury”.

Several organisations in the liquor industry have started pre-emptive lobbying in the face of possible new alcohol bans as COVID infections are rising in a third wave. At the same time, The Southern African Alcohol Policy Alliance is pressuring the government to institute tougher alcohol controls to pre-empt the new wave of infections. 

The study was published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Review.

The authors, all associated with Stellenbosch University or the South African Medical Research Council, which helped fund their work, compared data from Worcester Regional Hospital for 2020 with the same from 2019, across trauma admissions, trauma operations, and stab wound admissions, “as a proxy for intentional injury”.

A pattern of decreased hospital use was observed in 2020 when there were bans and partial bans, and a resurgence following even the partial lifting of bans.

“Each time a complete ban was instituted, there was a significant drop in trauma volume which was lost by allowing alcohol (even partial sales),” the researchers wrote.

Specifically, there was a 59–69% decrease in trauma volume between pre-Covid-19 and the first complete ban period. When alcohol sales were partially rein-stated, trauma volume significantly increased by 83–90% then dropped again by 39–46% with the second alcohol ban.”

The study “demonstrates a clear trend of decreased trauma admissions and operations during complete alcohol prohibition compared to when alcohol sales were allowed or only partially restricted,” the authors wrote.

They concluded that an alcohol ban is an effective way to reduce strain on healthcare infrastructure.

“These findings suggest that temporary, complete bans on alcohol sales can be used to decrease health facility traffic during national emergencies.”

The authors considered the possibility other measures such as the curfew could have affected the result, but argued that it was unlikely.

Source: Business Insider

Trump Encouraged to Urge Followers to Take Vaccine

As US polls show that half of Republicans voters are reluctant to get a COVID vaccine, two former senior Trump administration officials have said that former US President Donald Trump is being encouraged to urge his followers to get the jab. 

The officials stressed that herd immunity could be threatened by Republican vaccine hesitancy, and that Trump’s followers will listen to him and him alone.

“Vaccines are widely regarded as one of Trump’s greatest accomplishments, and Trump understands that this legacy is at risk because half of his supporters are not taking the vaccine,” one of the officials told CNN. “It’s just not clear yet if he understands that he’s the only one who can fix this.”

The other official concurred. “In Trump country, if you want to call it that, there are still significant numbers of people who aren’t sure [COVID] is a real thing, despite folks getting sick, and there are lots of suspicions about the vaccine,” the source said. “They have literally said to me, ‘I want to hear from the president about this.’ I don’t think they’re going to listen to anyone else.”

Trump told Fox News last week that he would make a “commercial” about the vaccine, but did not make a firm commitment.
However, a person close to Trump disagreed he should take this approach. “He shouldn’t be pushing these vaccines. His posse isn’t exactly vaccine-approving and it could backfire,” the person said.

All the living former presidents save for Trump, and their wives, appeared in an ad campaign started last month encouraging vaccination – though Trump’s team denied he was approached to participate. This was because the team that organised the PSA did not think it was likely he would participate, according to a source close to that project.

In the Fox interview, Trump said, “I encourage them to take it. I do,” referring to his supporters, but has only spoken out a few times about vaccination.

Fifty-four percent of Republicans are either hesitant about or opposed to getting a COVID vaccine, according to a March survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, and 29% said they would not get a vaccine under any circumstances.

The number of people 18 and over with at least one vaccine dose, the top 10 states are all states President Joe Biden won last November. Trump won 9 out of the bottom 10 states for vaccination.

A third former Trump official confided that as early as last summer, there were already concerns over Republican vaccine refusal.

“On Facebook I saw a ton of hesitancy for that group — just insane amounts of hesitancy already and we knew it was just going to get worse,” the official said.

That official said Trump ally Michael Caputo briefly mentioned to Trump last fall that it would be good for the president to do a vaccine PSA after the election.

One of the other former officials noted that recently, Caputo “in particular has been active in discussing” the possibility of doing a PSA with the Trump team.

“Michael takes this very seriously and sees this as a big public health problem,” said the source. “His stepping out, because he’s so connected to the president, is really going to be forceful and incredibly helpful.”

Mr Caputo served as assistant secretary for public affairs at the US Department of Health and Human Services, leaving after being diagnosed with throat cancer and a rant at heath scientists saying they were undermining Trump.

Mr Caputo confirmed to CNN that he met with Trump and the two men “spoke about vaccine hesitancy and what can be done about it.”

Trump’s final year in office will define his legacy, according to historians, which was marred by the failure to contain COVID and his incitement of a mob that stormed the US Capitol.

The former  officials said they don’t want to see the vaccine development that Trump pushed undone by vaccine hesitancy, including among his own supporters.

“I see Operation Warp Speed tipping towards failure, and it really concerns me,” one of the senior officials warned. “If we don’t move half those people into the vaccinated column, we’re most likely not going to reach community immunity, and if we don’t reach it, then the president’s vaccine legacy is dead.”

The other senior official said Trump supporters would respond positively to the former president “taking ownership of Operation Warp Speed” and mentioning that he and his wife were both vaccinated.

“He could talk about how [vaccine uptake] is the way to get the country back to where it needs to be economically and socially, using his language that he uses with his supporters. I think that would be really powerful,” said the source.

Source: CNN

Liquor Industry Questions Alcohol Ban Effectiveness

Representatives from the liquor industry have said that the South African government must consider data from a new report that shows little alcohol ban effectiveness on trauma cases. However, other studies show negative effects of alcohol during lockdown, and a surge in violent trauma in Cape Town after alcohol bans were lifted.

In a statement on Thursday, the South African Liquor Brand owners Association (Salba) referenced a new report showing that, compared to other countries, South Africa saw similar trauma cases with its lockdown and alcohol ban to those that only had a lockdown.

The report had financial support from Distell, led by independent data expert Ian McGorian of Silver Fox Consulting, in collaboration with professor Mike Murray from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

The report found that trauma cases in South Africa under lockdown dropped 60%. But other countries also saw the same drop with no alcohol ban, including the UK (57%), Ireland (62%), Italy (56.6%) and the USA (54%), casting doubt over the effectiveness of alcohol bans in curbing trauma. The researchers also commented that curfews may have explained more of a reduction in trauma cases than alcohol bans.

While members of the liquor industry recognised the impact of alcohol on South African society, they said that government needs to be more objective with its lockdown regulations.

Salba chairperson Sibani Mngadi said the alcohol ban over Easter Weekend, while simultaneously allowing larger gatherings, made even less sense in reducing COVID transmission. This suggests that government was not considering science in its decision making, he said.

However, a multicentre study from Colorado, USA showed that even while trauma cases during lockdown fell by 33%, alcohol screens increased from 34% to 37%, and alcohol positive patients rose from 32% to 39%.

A study of Cape Town trauma admissions saw a dramatic drop of 53% in trauma admissions during the hard lockdown and an immediate rebound coinciding with the resumption of alcohol sales, with a 107% increase in gunshots wounds compared to pre-lockdown conditions.

The researchers noted that in South Africa the trauma demographic is much younger, with much higher rates of violence, with about half of homicide victims in SA testing positive for alcohol.

Distell chief executive Richard Rushton said the industry was merely asking that the data should be viewed objectively to improve dialogue with decision makers.

“We are all on the same side, and we want to help find solutions. We are very clear that alcohol abuse is unacceptable and causes harm. Our view is that the focus must be on finding ways to deal with high-risk drinkers, rather than using blunt instruments that penalise all South Africans.

“Any proposed new regulations need to be evidence-based, rational and target problem areas,” he said.

Business Leadership SA chief executive Busisiwe Mavuso said that lockdown could have been better managed, as 220 000 jobs had been lost along billions of rands in tax to the fiscus, while uncertainty still plagued alcohol producers.

“The decisions made to confront the health crisis should not have unintended consequences for the economy, and that is exactly what has happened with the bans on alcohol,” she said.

Mr Mavuso added that, since the start of the pandemic, business has been a willing partner to government and “needs to be part of the solution to ensure we fight this pandemic with the least possible damage to the economy”.

“The data analysis by the alcohol industry is an important intervention and must be taken seriously as we move forward.”

Source: BusinessTech

EU and UK Aim for ‘Win-win Situation’ to End Vaccine Row

After weeks of tensions over Covid vaccine supplies, the UK and the European Union have said they are working together to improve their relationship, to “create a win-win situation and expand vaccine supply for all”.

The EU’s Internal Market Commissioner Thierry said that the disputes were with AstraZeneca, not the UK. “I know that there’s some tension… but as long as we have transparency, I think [relations] will be able to be normalised,” he said.

Some 19 EU countries have reported a rise in infections, giving their vaccine rollout an even greater urgency,The joint UK-EU statement said that “openness and global co-operation” would be key to tackling the pandemic.

“We are all facing the same pandemic and the third wave makes co-operation between the EU and UK even more important,” it said. “We will continue our discussions.”
EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides rejected any notion of punishing the UK. “We’re dealing with a pandemic and this is not seeking to punish any countries,” she said.

Responding to the question of whether the UK might retaliate, Mr Johnson told MPs he did not believe “that blockades of either vaccines or of medicines, of ingredients for vaccines” would be “sensible”. It is possible that companies might draw conclusions about future investments “in countries where arbitrary blockades are imposed”, he added.
The EU’s Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton insisted the contention was with AstraZeneca and not the UK government. “I know that there’s some tension… but as long as we have transparency, I think [relations] will be able to be normalised,” he said.

Had AstraZeneca supplied the 120 million doses to the EU as was agreed, its member states would have achieved the same vaccination rates as the UK: “We have been heavily penalised and we just want to understand why”.

Source: BBC News

Brazil’s ICU Beds Full Amidst ‘Catastrophe’

Brazilian doctors say the situation is “well beyond chaos” even as the country’s COVID-sceptic president refuses to take decisive action against the pandemic.  

An article in The Guardian reports that Brazil is facing the worst medical crisis in its history, as researchers from its leading healthcare institute, Fiocruz, have said the country is entering into a “catastrophe”.

COVID intensive care units in virtually all of the country’s hospitals are either full or almost full, with Fiocruz warning that “The situation is absolutely critical.”

Ricardo Barros, Bolsonaro’s leader in the lower house said on Wednesday: “Our situation isn’t all that critical. Compared to other countries, it’s actually quite comfortable.” This was said on a day in which 2798 fatalities and a record 90 830 new cases were reported.

However, intensive care physicians interviewed by The Guardian tell a different story.

“Things are desperate,” said Dr Hermeto Paschoalick, the head of the critical care unit in the midwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, where ICUs are currently 93% full.

Things were worse elsewhere, especially in the state’s capital. “I was told yesterday that there’s a health clinic there with 20 ambulances parked outside. The patients are arriving from small towns in the interior and there’s nowhere to put them – so they just keep them in the ambulances,” said Dr Paschoalick.

Although most in his care were over 60s, Dr Paschoalick said there were young people as well. “Right now, I’ve got three people on ventilators including a 22-year-old woman and another who is 25. Both were pregnant when they arrived. One lost the baby, the other managed to give birth. Both are intubated and in a really bad state,” he said.

Many doctors are forced to choose which patients can receive a bed in ICU.

“People are going around saying Brazil is going to collapse,” said critical care doctor Pedro Carvalho at a university hospital in the riverside town of Petrolina. “But we’ve collapsed already – completely collapsed.” 

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro meanwhile, shows no sign of changing his stance, claiming that there is a “war” against him. 

Source: The Guardian