Two UN human rights experts said Brazil must immediately abandon misguided austerity policies that are endangering lives and increase spending to combat inequality and poverty exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
"The COVID-19 outbreak has magnified the adverse impacts of the 2016 constitutional amendment that limited public spending in Brazil for 20 years," said Independent Expert on human rights and foreign debt, Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, and Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty, Philip Alston. "The effects are now dramatically visible in the current crisis.
The experts noted that, for instance, only 10 percent of Brazilian municipalities have intensive care beds and the Unified Health System does not even have half the number of hospital beds recommended by the World Health Organization.
They have repeatedly expressed concern that the measures taken in Brazil were prioritizing the economy over people's lives.
