“He (President Bolsonaro) does not understand how serious it is for a lupus patient to go without treatment. Lately, she has been frustrated at both the suspension of deliveries of a drug the president flaunts vast supplies of and of her LOAS (Organic Law for Social Assistance), a benefit paid by the National Institute of Social Security (INSS) to people with chronic illnesses, like lupus: Suffering from lupus and fibromyalgia, Bianca Nunes has been using hydroxychloroquine for eight years. Those most affected are the ones who need it most, such as Bianca Nunes, 29, a resident of Austin in Nova Iguaçu, a municipality in Greater Rio de Janeiro. After that, RioFarmes declared they were preparing a public bid for its purchase. The last time I was able to get hydroxychloroquine with any regularity was in 2014. This year, at least 83,000 pills were thrown out. In 2020, the army revealed that 400,000 pills were “ idle due to a lack of demand.” All the while, the supply of hydroxychloroquine to those who actually needed it continued to be irregular. In 2021, I went at least six months without access to the medication. Even with the pandemic subsiding and many of the 2.8 million pills manufactured by the army expiring, none of these reached Rio for its chronically ill. At the height of the pandemic and without a single pill, I asked acquaintances from other states to look in nearby pharmacies and ended up getting one box of pills from São Paulo and two more from Pernambuco.Īs a result, the lack of the chemical compound has been scaring those who need it most and fluctuating deliveries mean the chronically ill cannot access medicine they are prescribed for the long-term. Unfortunately, despite my hopes, the supply was not regularized, and we actually had a rush to the pharmacies, which left many chronically ill people without their medication.

Since 2014, we’ve been experiencing irregular deliveries of hydroxychloroquine sulfate, distributed to patients by the State’s pharmaceutical firm RioFarmes. Hemorrhages are also common, for example.ĭespite there being no proof of efficacy against coronavirus, the increased production of the medication ignited my hope: maybe now deliveries would be regularized, which hadn’t been the case in Rio de Janeiro for years. This is not the only side effect of the medication’s long-term use. Even so, I had side effects from the medicine, such as considerable loss of vision, meaning I had to have surgery last year. To have access to the medication, I have to undergo medical tests and see an ophthalmologist for quarterly examinations.

The order went through without public bidding or authorization by the Health Ministry, and despite there being no proof of efficacy against the coronavirus.Ĭhronically affected by lupus, dermatomyositis and keratoconus, I, Tássia di Carvalho, am part of the group of people that depend on hydroxychloroquine for the treatment it was developed and approved for.

In March, 2020, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro ordered the army to manufacture 2.8 million hydroxychloroquine pills for the alleged treatment of Covid-19.

Rio on watch