Brazil Aid will dispense with vaccinations until April, says Ministry of Citizenship

Child vaccination will no longer be a condition for the beneficiaries of Auxílio Brasil to receive the funds in the first five months of implementation. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the obligation was suspended for Bolsa Família in October and will continue until the beginning of April 2022 in the case of the new social program.

The vaccination requirement was suspended for six months by an ordinance published by the Ministry of Citizenship in early October. At the time, the text mentioned among the justifications the need to avoid agglomerations, the fact that health units were being used to care for those infected by Covid-19 and the closing of social assistance centers during the period.

The text of the MP (Provisional Measure) that created Auxílio Brasil and has the force of law follows the rules of Bolsa Família on vaccination and requires beneficiaries to keep the immunization card for children up to 7 years old up to date. The same text gives the Ministry of Citizenship the power to suspend the requirement for social, technical, operational reasons or in cases of force majeure.

“Child vaccination is an important tool for the healthy development of children and is not a requirement for payment of aid,” said the ministry in a text. After requests for clarification, the folder detailed that the suspension will be temporary.

The Ministry of Health’s national vaccination calendar includes immunization against numerous diseases – such as measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis A and B, meningitis, polio, yellow fever and rotavirus.

Both in Bolsa Família and in the new Auxílio Brasil, the rules provide that benefits are cut in case of non-compliance only after a gradual treatment and taking into account the family’s history.

“The effects resulting from non-compliance with the conditionalities of the Auxílio Brasil Program will be gradual and applied according to the non-compliances identified in the history of the beneficiary family”, says the MP for Auxílio Brasil.

In the case of Bolsa Família, the loss of benefit occurred after a series of procedures that began with a warning and gradually evolved into the blocking of resources, suspension and, ultimately, cancellation. In the case of Auxílio Brasil, the MP provides that the procedures will be regulated by the Ministry of Citizenship.

“The objective of the conditionalities is to encourage families to exercise the right of access to public policies on social assistance, education and health, in order to contribute to the improvement of the population’s living conditions”, says the Ministry of Citizenship.

The measure of Citizenship is taken after records of a drop in immunization in the country. As showed the sheet in June, vaccination coverage in Brazil, which had already been declining in recent years, plummeted further in 2020 during the pandemic, increasing the risk of new disease outbreaks.

An unprecedented analysis by Ieps (Institute for Health Policy Studies), based on data from the Ministry of Health updated until April 4, showed that less than half of Brazilian municipalities had reached the target established by the PNI (National Immunization Plan ) for nine vaccines, including those that protect against hepatitis, polio, tuberculosis and measles.

Meanwhile, studies show that Bolsa Família helped raise immunization. A survey by Word Without Poverty (WWP), a partnership between the World Bank and government branches such as Ipea (Institute for Applied Economic Research) and the former Ministry of Social Development, concludes that the program had a positive impact on vaccination, especially in this case of polio.

“The proportion of beneficiary children aged 06 to 23 months who received the second dose of polio vaccine in the appropriate period was 6.9 percentage points higher than the proportion of children from non-beneficiary families. For the third dose, the proportion was 11.6 percentage points higher”, states the WWP study, prepared in 2017.

The survey also concluded that vaccination against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough was also more frequent among Bolsa Família beneficiary families, with a difference of 15.5 percentage points in the second dose and 26 percentage points in the third.

“In addition to reducing monetary poverty, the Program has contributed decisively to breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty, in its multiple dimensions, strengthening the development of families and expanding citizenship and social equity”, says the WWP study.