Medical workers care for patients in the emergency room of the Nossa Senhora da Conceicao Hospital, which is overcrowded due to the coronavirus outbreak in Porto Alegre, Brazil, March 11, 2021. REUTERS / Diego Vara
Hospitals in Brazil were left without the drugs needed to sedate patients on Thursday, with reports of severely tied and intubated patients without effective sedatives.
The scenes that take place throughout Brazil, one of the countries most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, are putting increasing international pressure on President Jair Bolsonaro.
The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) assistance group said Brazil’s “failed response” had led to thousands of preventable deaths and created a worsening humanitarian catastrophe.
Brazil has a total of 361,884 coronavirus deaths – only the United States has more – and 13,673,507 confirmed cases.
Today, more Brazilians die from the virus every day than anywhere else in the world. Bolsonaro opposed the blockade and organized large events in which he often does not wear a mask. He recently embraced vaccines as a possible solution.
Hospitals in Brazil are struggling to cope.
Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo have both sounded the alarm about the lack of sedatives, with the Sao Paulo health secretary saying the city’s ability to care for seriously ill COVID-19 patients is about to collapse.
“I never thought I would live like this after 20 years of intensive care,” Aureo do Carmo Filho, an ICU doctor in Rio, told Reuters.
“Using mechanical restraint systems without sedatives is a bad practice … the patient is subjected to some form of torture,” he said.
Patients with severely ill COVID-19 struggling to breathe are sedated to put them on ventilators, an intrusive practice that the body can naturally resist.
With ICU beds at or close to capacity across the country, hospitals are forced to create makeshift intensive care beds that often lack the equipment or professional expertise.
The Globo television network reported on Wednesday cases from a hospital in Rio in which patients were intubated with a lack of sedatives, tied to beds.
Albert Schweitzer Hospital, through Rio’s press office that runs it, said there is a shortage of intubation drugs, but that substitutes are being used to ensure health care is not compromised. Mechanical restraint systems were said to be used only when prescribed by a physician.
Rio added that a batch of intubation drugs was due to arrive on Thursday.
“FAILED ANSWER”
Doctors Without Borders said Bolsonaro’s government had not done enough to prevent the tragedy.
“More than a year after the COVID-19 pandemic, Brazil’s failed response has caused a humanitarian catastrophe,” said Christos Christou, a doctor and president of MSF, called Doctors Without Borders.
“Every week there is a new gloomy record of deaths and infections – hospitals are overflowing and yet there is still no centralized coordinated response,” Christou said in a briefing with reporters, adding that the situation was expected to worsen in the weeks ahead. .
Bolsonaro has openly fought state and local governments that want to set up blockades, saying Brazilians must continue their normal lives and that job losses are more dangerous than the virus.
MSF Director General Meinie Nicolai said that the increase in cases could not be attributed solely to the Brazilian contagious variant COVID-19, known as P.1.
“Option P.1 is certainly a problem, but that does not explain the situation in Brazil,” she said.
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