Sao Paulo, Brazil – Brazil’s President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has appointed the country’s first female health minister. Nísia Trindade leads Latin America’s largest health research institution (Fiocruz) and has helped produce millions of COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic. She will be tasked with boosting vaccination rates and bringing science back to a health ministry that was all but abandoned by incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro.
Trindade is a sociologist and career researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) in Rio de Janeiro, where she has been president of the foundation since 2017. During the pandemic, her team conducted research and she negotiated with the University of Oxford for Fiocruz to produce and distribute the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has been applied to millions of Brazilians.
Under Trindade’s administration, Fiocruz became the first institution in Brazil to produce and distribute a COVID-19 vaccine to the Ministry of Health. Trindade’s performance during the pandemic Told He attracts the attention of Lula’s team, who then invite him to lead the Ministry of Health.
Trindade’s appointment has been celebrated by scholars and even by the World Health Organization. At Twitter, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom congratulated his “friend Nísia” for being the first woman to hold the post in Brazil. “All the best and I look forward to working together in the years to come to advance health for all,” he said.
Many challenges to overcome
One of Trinidad’s main challenges at the ministry will be recovering vaccination rates, especially for children, which have plummeted under the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro, a vaccine skeptic.
The future minister herself defined priority vaccination in its administration. “We are going to establish a vaccination target for all age groups with the vision of recovering vaccination coverage in Brazil. We will strengthen the national immunization program,” she said.
Read more: Falling vaccination rates worry experts as Brazil launches new polio vaccination campaign
She recalled that Brazil’s National Immunization Program will complete its 50th anniversary in 2023 and said that “it is not possible to have setbacks in this area. “We will think of immunization as a national effort, which will involve health, schools and the social development field.”
Trindade also intends strengthen the SUS, the Brazilian public health system, and resume investments in programs such as Farmácia Popular (popular pharmacy), which distributes medicines to populations in need. “The idea is to use the full potential of SUS, with its own services.”
According to the doctor and public health lawyer Daniel Dourado, the post of Minister of Health is “essentially political”. He said Brazil Reports that Trindade will have the crucial mission of restoring the department’s role as the federal manager of the SUS, “which has been rebuilt abandoned in recent years”, and of engaging with states and cities.
With regard to vaccination, it is worth remembering the fundamental role that the administration of Nisia has played in the pandemic. Also in 2020, Fiocruz made the very good bet of signing a contract with AstraZeneca for the production of vaccines in Brazil,” said Dourado.
The challenge now, according to Dourado, is “to restore the national vaccination program and develop communication work” so that the population is properly vaccinated again.
Worrying prospects for the health sector in Brazil
Transition team coordinator and vice-president-elect Geraldo Alckmin called the health situation in Brazil “disastrous”.
Upon delivery of the transition report, which analyzed each section of government, Alckmin stressed the need to prioritize the health sector. Bolsonaro’s management in health care has been disastrous. he said.
As an example, Alckmin highlighted the decline in vaccination rates: the number of children under seven with vaccination follow-up fell from 68% in 2019 to 45% in 2022.
He also said that 50% of children under four did not take the second dose against poliomyelitis, a disease eradicated in Brazil since 1989.
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