Trying to ignore the fact that the country has one of the highest death tolls in the world from Covid19, Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga arrived in Geneva this weekend to deliver a speech Jair Bolsonaro’s government got right . in the fight against the pandemic, that vaccination rates are reaching high rates and that universal health services are valued.
In an effort to debunk the image of denier, Queiroga is attending the World Health Assembly, which begins this Sunday, with the aim of presenting Brazil as a sort of example of some of the responses to the crisis. Participation will take place at the same time that the Bolsonaro government is declaring the end of the health emergency at the same time as the start of the election campaign.
It’s not time for the international agency to declare the end of the pandemic and 70 countries are registering an increase in cases.
Queiroga’s speech is scheduled to take place on Monday morning. According to members of the Ministry of Health himself, the minister is carrying a speech that, at least in a first version, bordered on pride in confirming the results of vaccination coverage and other measures taken by the country.
According to sources who had access to the document, a preliminary version ignored the delay in starting vaccination, President Jair Bolsonaro’s behavior in promoting agglomerations, criticism of WHO recommendations, the multimillion dollar purchase of drugs that turned out not to be have proven effective, and mainly The fact that Brazil has one of the highest numbers of Covid19 deaths in the world is only surpassed by the United States.
Starting this weekend, ministers and heads of government from all over the world will meet again in person at the WHO (World Health Organization) for the first time. One of the goals is to start building the new health diplomacy architecture and tools so that a new pandemic does not catch the world unprepared.
The Ministry of Health was visited twice but did not say what Queiroga’s agenda in Switzerland will be. The Itamaraty were silent too. However, the column noted that he will have bilateral meetings with some countries, attend events on Sunday and Monday, and then continue his trip to the Davos Economic Forum.
However, Queiroga will arrive with an acceptance speech for the SUS, while the government looks to use the fact that it has become a vaccine donor to insist Brazil is also part of the solution.
If Queiroga hopes to “normalize” Brazil’s relationship with the global health sector, the order among foreign governments is to treat the current Brazilian government with a mixture of caution and coldness. “We are in dialogue with Brazil, but we are already looking at what the end of a government could be,” admitted a negotiator from a key European country. She admits, on condition of anonymity, that there is widespread “relief” at the risk that Bolsonaro will not win a second term.
The corridors of the WHO still echo criticism of the Brazilian government for ignoring the advice of the scientific community at the height of the pandemic crisis.
At the agency’s summit, the Brazilian president’s name was followed by the word “crazy,” while technicians failed to understand how a country with expertise in health issues, topclass specialists and a solid supply network succumbed so profoundly to the virus. “Where are you?” asked one of the key players in the WHO response amid the mounting deaths.
Steve Levitsky, a Harvard University professor and author of the bestselling book How Democracies Die, points out that Bolsonaro preferred to copy Donald Trump himself in a policy that failed.
“The pandemic is not over yet,” warns the WHO
The world event kicked off this Sunday with a video about pain, how the past two years have “opened our eyes” and how health is linked to economic prosperity.
It was up to WHO DirectorGeneral Tedros Ghebreyesus to set the tone for the event. According to him, the world has “suffered and continues to suffer” in the face of the pandemic. According to him, the number of additional deaths during the pandemic was 15 million people, well above the official figures.
He criticized disinformation widely disseminated by the Bolsonaro government and made it clear that the pandemic is not over yet. “She won’t magically disappear,” he said.
“In many countries, restrictions have been lifted and life looks like it used to. Is the pandemic over? no It certainly isn’t,” he said.
“It wasn’t the message you wanted to hear. But not what I wanted to say. But it is the reality,” Tedros told ministers around the world.
According to him, progress has been made and vaccination is reaching 60% of the world’s population. But only 57% of countries managed to cross the 70% mark of their vaccinated population.
Tedros stressed that more than 70 countries had registered an increase in cases in recent weeks. “The pandemic will not end until it’s over around the world,” he said. “The virus caught us by surprise and we cannot yet predict its pace or intensity,” he added.
At the opening of the event, the Swiss Minister of Health, Alain Berset, also made it clear: “We have not yet overcome the pandemic”. Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta used the conference to say dozens of countries around the world were “relying” on WHO’s recommendations to deal with the crisis, a stance the Bolsonaro government refused to accept for months.
UN SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres called the pandemic “a moral test that humanity is failing”.
French President Emmanuel Macron emphasized that the pandemic was not over and that new variants could emerge. According to him, efforts to vaccinate the world population must continue.