‘Today is the saddest World Health Day in the history of Brazil, a country considered as the epicenter of the global Covid-19 pandemic. I wanted it to be a day of celebration, in which each and every Brazilians could celebrate the conquest of the right to health and life,’ he pointed out.

However, there is nothing to celebrate when an uncontrolled pandemic wiped out nearly three million people worldwide, 330,000 of them in Brazil alone, Lula stressed.

Unfortunately, Brazil is a global danger and ‘this threat to the planet has name and surname: Jair Bolsonaro, a president who systematically turns thumbs down to science and pays no attention to the suffering of the people he swore to defend.’

In addition, Lula stated that ‘health professionals at the same time have to fight a deadly virus and the negligence of the government, which lacks everything’.

The main tools to fight the virus – mass vaccination, social distancing and face masks – are criminally boycotted by the government, he insisted.

ef/pll/jf/ocs