Health Ministry Releases R$152 million for Emergency Aid to Rio’s Health System

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The municipality of Rio de Janeiro will be allocated R$152 million by the Ministry of Health to invest in the health area.

The agreement was signed yesterday, December 13th, by the interim minister of health, João Gabbardo, and the mayor of Rio, Marcelo Crivella, at the City Palace, headquarters of the municipal administration, in Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro.

The emergency aid to the municipality, which is experiencing salary arrears, shortage of medicines and compromised care in several units, was negotiated this week with the federal government during the mayor’s trip to Brasília, in a meeting with President Jair Bolsonaro, and with the federal solicitor general, André Luiz de Almeida Mendonça, and the interim Minister of Health.

The funding, to be released in two installments of R$76 million each, in December and January, is a portion of the sum the city government had been claiming in court as federal government debt for the municipalization of health units since 1995.

Agreement

Gabbardo stressed that he was guided by the president to expedite the case. “The president urged faster action, and that’s what we did. The payment of a portion was expected, and the second would be released in only 12 months, in 2020. We made an effort and transferred funds from other areas”.

“We scraped the pot to get what we still had left from the 2019 Budget and took the first installment of the 2020 Budget. This was a tremendous challenge for the Ministry of Health, not to meet the needs of the city government, but rather to address the needs of the population of Rio de Janeiro,” he said.

According to the minister, R$225 million remain to be paid. According to the Ministry of Health’s calculations, the federal government recognizes that it still owes part of the debt, but teams from the portfolio and the municipality are examining the amount that the federal government should transfer over the next year. “The maximum amount is R$225 million, but it will surely not reach that much. As soon as it is defined, we will negotiate with the city hall on how to transfer these funds”.

Inputs and medicines

Mayor Marcelo Crivella stressed that the funds of the two installments will be used to purchase supplies and medicines, among other expenses. The payment of outsourced Social Organizations (OS), which manage municipal units, will be achieved through the reclassification of municipal budget resources.

“We are going to invest in medicines or health supplies. It is worth recalling that the municipality has already disbursed funds to 5,000 health agents who had been in arrears for two months, most of them for only one month, and also to nursing staff. In the coming days, we will pay doctors and other professionals,” he said.

According to the mayor, once the salaries are paid, care in the health units will soon return to normal. “All resources allocated to the community agents’ salaries have already been transferred to the OS. If it has not been deposited yet, it is being deposited today, Monday at the latest. Next week, with the funds received, we will pay the doctors, in a smaller amount, as well as the nurses.”

Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who took part in the ceremony, pointed out that, as a deputy on the Rio bench he intervened in the negotiations of the agreement. “It is the people of Rio who are suffering. We know how difficult it is to manage the public network and make sure that these resources, which are very focused on the central government, always reach the municipalities,” he said.

Protest

Before the official ceremony to sign the agreement began, employees of the Social Organizations took part in a protest outside the City Palace. Community agent Eden José dos Santos, 50 years old, who has been working at the Family Clinic of Rocinha for 15 years, confirmed that outsourced employees began to be paid part of their salary yesterday, even though his own salary has been in arrears for over two months now.

“This is absurd. There is no planning. For three years now, at the end of the year, the same thing happens. It’s unbelievable. Unacceptable,” he said.

Source: Agência Brasil