Health, science and memory

Chico D’Angelo *

Societies build a prosperous future not because they forget the past, but because they remember what happened so that mistakes are not repeated and successes are beacons. If we want a fairer and happier future for Brazil, we must not forget. This is what happens to me, as a physician and a member of Congress who has built the public life of working in health, when the Covid-19 CPI concludes its work and presents the final report on what has been found.

The list of absurdities and crimes committed by President Jair Bolsonaro and his followers must be systematically remembered, so that justice will be served and things like this will never happen again: the delay in the procurement of vaccines, the parallel government in which I worked. The bowels of the government, suspicions of corruption, the collapse of oxygen in the Amazon, the spread of fake news, the Prevent Senior scandal, the farce of early treatments…

At the same time, the pandemic demonstrated the need to maintain and improve the unified health system, to defend, above all, the principles of universalization, complementarity and equity that guided the creation of the system in the founding discussions of 1988: every citizen has the right to health and access to all public health services; All people’s basic needs must be satisfied in an integrated manner; We must be aware of the differences in living and health conditions and in people’s needs, because the right to health involves social differences and must meet the diversity that characterizes the Brazilian population.

The epidemic is not over and we still need to take care of ourselves. We’ve made progress on vaccination coverage — an expression that refers to the percentage of the population that has been vaccinated — not because of the federal government, but in spite of it. The people of Brazil, historically, love vaccinations; The National Immunization Program (PNI) created in the 1970s is a successful public achievement to be reckoned with, given the advances of deniers in the service of obscurantism.

Defending science in the face of destructive government anger (which sees resources earmarked for the region as expenditure rather than essential investment), reaffirming access to health care as a fundamental right, and fighting the lies peddled by death advocates is a commitment to citizenship and building a better nation for those coming.

We will not forget.