Danielle Jinkings Reporter Agência Brasil
Brasília – Last week, the government announced a R$55 billion budget cut. But as presented by the ministers of Finance and Planning, Guido Mantega and Miriam Belchior, respectively, Brazil’s cutbacks did not look much like an austerity program. On the contrary, explained minister Mantega, the economic situation remains rosy. He predicted GDP growth of 4.5% and lots of money for showcase government programs such as low- cost housing (“Minha Casa, Minha Vida”) and the Accelerated Growth Program (“PAC”).
However, the market has since responded via the weekly Central Bank survey of financial institutions and analysts, known as the Focus report, with a forecast of 3.3% GDP growth for 2012.
Now the Catholic Church has taken the opportunity of its announcement on Ash Wednesday of its annual Fraternity Campaign to express its doubts. This year’s Fraternity Campaign (the 49th) theme is the public health system and its problems; in particular, the way people have to wait in long lines for things they are supposed to have a right to, but that are frequently not available: a doctor, a hospital bed, medicine, for example.
The secretary-general of the Brazilian Catholic Bishops Conference (“CNBB”), dom Leonardo Steiner, said it was no exaggeration to say that the public health system is not very well. He went on to say that the R$5 billion cut in the Ministry of Health’s budget was worrisome.
“The problems in public health are a reflection of our market-based economy where ethical-moral and social values often have no place,” Steiner declared.
The CNBB campaign text (“texto-base”) expresses deep concern by the Church with regard to public health services, calling for humane attention by the system for patients and adequate financing of the system by the government (calling the latter “problematic and insufficient”). It pointedly criticizes the lack of spending on the Unified Public Health System (“SUS”).
The text compares spending patterns in Brazil, where, in 2009, 47% of total health costs were paid by the government, while individuals and families (that is, taxpayers) paid the other 57%. In many countries, says the CNBB, 70% of health costs are paid by the government.
Dom Leonardo Steiner said the CNBB was aware of progress made in Brazil: lower rates of infant mortality, the eradication of some infectious diseases, more efficient vaccination campaigns and an AIDS treatment program that was internationally recognized and admired as a success.
Allen Bennett – translator/editor The News in English
Link - CNBB escolhe saúde pública como tema da Campanha da Fraternidade e critica corte do Orçamento
