Medical workers care for patients in the emergency room of Nossa Senhora da Conceicao hospital, overcrowded due to the coronavirus outbreak, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, March 11, 2021. REUTERS / Diego Vara
Hospitals in Brazil were running low on drugs needed to calm patients on Thursday, with reports of critically ill people being tied up and intubated without effective sedatives.
The scenes set in Brazil, one of the countries hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, put increasing international pressure on President Jair Bolsonaro.
MSF aid organization said Brazil’s “failed response” has resulted in thousands of avoidable deaths and a humanitarian disaster that could get worse.
Brazil has recorded a total of 361,884 coronavirus deaths – only the United States has more – and 13,673,507 confirmed cases.
Today, more Brazilians are dying from the virus every day than anywhere else in the world. Bolsonaro has resisted lockdowns and held major events where he often doesn’t wear a mask. Only recently has he embraced vaccines as a possible solution.
Hospitals in Brazil are struggling.
Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo have both raised the alarm about sedative shortages, with Sao Paulo health secretary saying the city’s ability to care for critically ill COVID-19 patients is on the verge of collapse.
“I never thought I would experience something like this after 20 years of working in intensive care,” Aureo do Carmo Filho, an ICU physician in Rio, told Reuters.
“Using mechanical restraints without tranquilizers is bad practice … the patient is subjected to some form of torture,” he said.
Critically ill COVID-19 patients who have difficulty breathing are sedated to put them on fans, an intrusive practice that the body can naturally resist.
As IC beds across the country are at or nearly full, hospitals are forced to create makeshift intensive care beds that often lack equipment or professional expertise.
Globo television network reported cases from a Rio hospital on Wednesday in which patients were intubated with a lack of sedatives tied to beds.
Albert Schweitzer Hospital said through the Rio City News Agency that it manages intubation drugs shortages, but substitutes were used to ensure medical assistance was not compromised. It said mechanical restraints were only used on a doctor’s prescription.
The city of Rio added that a batch of intubation drugs would arrive on Thursday.
“FAILED RESPONSE”
MSF said the Bolsonaro government had not done enough to prevent the tragedy.
“More than a year after the COVID-19 pandemic, the failed response in Brazil has sparked a humanitarian disaster,” said Christos Christou, a physician and president of MSF, MSF.
“Every week there is a stark new record of deaths and infections – the hospitals are overflowing and yet there is still no coordinated centralized response,” Christou said in a briefing with reporters, adding that the situation is expected to get worse in the future. the weeks. further.
Bolsonaro has openly fought against state and local governments seeking to institute lockdowns, saying Brazilians should get on with normal life and job losses are more dangerous than the virus.
MSF Director General Meinie Nicolai said the increase in the number of cases cannot be attributed solely to the contagious Brazilian COVID-19 variant known as P.1.
“The P.1 variant is certainly a problem, but this does not explain the situation in Brazil,” she said.
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