Vanshika Jain
At a time when the health care centres are at verge of collapsing in Brazil, the ventilators and beds in the emergency room of Amazona are over 95 percent occupied, the renowned soccer stadium of Rio De Janerio has been converted temporarily into a hospital, the gravediggers of the largest country of South America are working overtime to bury the dead bodies, the corona virus mark has surpassed 30,000 in the country. Amid this Jair Bolsonaro, President of Brazil has frequently downplayed the severity of the global epidemic.
He advised that corona virus is just a “little flu” and the measures taken by the Health Ministry to curb it are unnecessary and economically harmful. Furthermore he said the outbreak is being blown out of proportion, insisting that economy should come into normality.
Yesterday Bolsonaro dismissed Mandetta, the Health minister of Brazil who from being an unsung minister in the cabinet became the most popular minster of Brazil due to the good work which the Health Ministry was doing to contain the pandemic in the country.
It is speculated that this decision came after the health minster criticized the President on a popular news show for refusing to obey the social distancing guidelines laid down by the Health Ministry.
This decision of banning Mandetta did now go well with the Brazilians as they came out of their windows banging pots and pans. Following this many ministers resigned from their post as a sign of protest.
The health ministry’s response in containing the epidemic was rated “good” or “great” by 76 percent of Brazilians, this data was submitted by Pollster Datafolha.
On several occasions Bolsonarao was seen not following the guidelines of World Health Organization and the Health Ministry of his own country. One of the occasions being, last week he visited a hospital with Mandetta, walked into the crowd, took off his mask and extended his hand for a supporter to kiss and autographed jerseys thus openly disobeying the social distancing guidelines
Naom Chomsky, an American linguistic said,” Bolsonarao competes with Trump to be the worst criminal on the planet.”
From the above instances it is clear that the President of Brazil is not acting as a responsible leader. He is not letting the Health Ministry do it’s work by meddling in between thus compromising the life’s of people of it’s nation for which he should be held accountable.