Queiroga uses polio vaccination act as a platform

The Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, used his speech during the act of vaccination against poliomyelitis, this Saturday morning (24), in Parque da Cidade, in Brasília, to defend the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and criticize him. opponents of its management.

The initial intention of the action was to mobilize parents and guardians to vaccinate children between one and under five years of age against polio and update the booklet of children and adolescents under 15 years of age.

PAHO (Pan American Health Organization) said this Wednesday (21) that Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Peru are at a very high risk of reintroduction of poliomyelitis, amid the drop in regional vaccination coverage against the disease for around 79%, the lowest since 1994.

Because of this, the Ministry of Health decided to extend the immunization campaigns against the disease until the end of this month. The campaigns started on August 8 and would run until the beginning of September.

Almost a month after the start of the campaign, only 35% of children aged 1 to 4 years had taken the vaccine, according to data from the ministry. The goal is to vaccinate 95% of the target audience, about 14.5 million people.

In a speech that rarely mentioned the disease, which was eradicated from the country in 1994, Queiroga praised the government’s achievements in the SUS (Unified Health System) and was exalted when mentioning the topic of corruption, always remembered by Bolsonaro when attacking his main adversary, the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).

“We recovered Hermobrás (Brazilian Company of Blood Products and Biotechnology), which was hidden in Federal Police operations, because corruption is a worse plague than the virus”, he said.

The Minister of Health also said that “birds of bad omen” said that Zé Gotinha (symbol of the vaccination campaign of the folder) “had been kidnapped”.

In May, Lula stated in a speech that Bolsonaro had sent the character away “because he thought he was a PT”, when criticizing the vaccination campaign against Covid-19.

“Today we have the Zé Gotinha family because our government defends life from conception, defends the family, defends our mothers and defends our children”, said Queiroga.

The minister also said that “many talk, many criticize, and they don’t know anything because they live locked in their offices and, sometimes, in their luxury offices and when they have a little time they will grant useless interviews on television.”

“Imagine if we were to think about these people’s heads what had happened? Are these the same people who closed a thousand hospital beds in the period 2008 and 2018? our country’s ability to produce a vaccine,” he said.

He also stated that his secretaries are technicians and that the Ministry of Health, for the most part, is made up of public servants “contrary to what happened in the past”

“Today, they are civil servants and, if I need to replace a secretary, I go to the staff of the Ministry of Health in Brazil,” he said.

Queiroga’s portfolio had secretaries who became known during the pandemic for being mentioned in the Covid CPI, such as Hélio Angotti, in the Secretary of Science, Technology, Innovation and Strategic Inputs.

He rejected guidelines on Covid that contraindicated the use of ineffective drugs for the disease, such as hydroxychloroquine.

Another example is the doctor Mayra Pinheiro, known as “Captain Chloroquine”, who led the Department of Labor Management and Health Education.

“When the variant emerged [da Covid-19] they said that we would have a collapse in the health system in Brazil. Where’s the collapse? They returned now in May with the same plot. People don’t believe these people,” he said.

“There is only one way and that is the truth. As it says, we Christians believe, our gospel of John: you will know the truth and the truth will set you free”, said the minister, repeating a biblical passage frequently quoted by Bolsonaro.