Residents of favelas, where about 13 million Brazilians live, also largely depend on the public health-care system, which is being battered by coronavirus cases. Chronic diseases such as diabetes, tuberculosis, and high blood pressure are especially prevalent among this population, putting them at higher risk for serious complications from COVID-19.
Gilson Rodrigues, the president of the residents’ association in São Paulo’s Paraisópolis favela, told me that public policies on COVID-19 don’t yet include “guidelines that take into account the reality of favelas.” In the absence of those, he helped found a national network of favelas that has hired its own doctors, enlisted its own fleet of private ambulances, manufactured its own masks, provided accommodation for those who can’t otherwise self-isolate, organized food deliveries, and offered financial assistance to self-employed professionals who have lost their jobs.
In Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, the public health-care system is reeling from a surge in COVID-19 patients. Speaking about the bleak situation recently, Manaus’s mayor burst into tears on television. “Videos circulating on social media have demonstrated the desperation of families seeking urgent care, while bodies pile up next to patients in understaffed hospitals in Manaus,” Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum, an international-human-rights expert at Cardozo Law in New York, wrote in a recent analysis of Brazil’s predicament.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member