The pandemic Amaina in Brazil thanks to the strong adhesion of the population to the vaccination campaign.
Days ago that several states no longer record deaths, but the country still remains a lot to overcome the trauma that involves having lost almost 610,0000 lives.
Behind the numbers there are thousands of personal stories, some as dramatic as those of the orphans of the Covid-19.
In Brazil they are counted by thousands.
Giovanna Gomes Mendes is one of them.
She lost her father and her mother with 14 days apart.
For 19 years, she has had to take care of her little sister, of 11.
“It is very difficult to cope with it, especially for emotional reasons, when I lost my mother, I thought that from there I would overcome it, along with my father and with my sister, who in spite of everything we would stabilize us, only that after I lost my
Father. All he had imagined I lost him suddenly. Everything collapsed. Learning with that loss is very difficult, the longer it happens more I miss them, “he explains in statements to the world.
His pain is that of thousands of minors.
A study by the Imperial College of London estimated that around five million children under 18 around the world lost a father, a mother, both, or grandparents in case they were raising them.
In Brazil, the figure until mid-October is 168,500 homeless children and adolescents.
It is an estimate, the actual impact could be greater.
In some way, Giovanna became the visible face of all those stories that are living in silence between four walls.
Last October she went to the Senate as a victim of the Covid-19, along with other families of deceased during the pandemic.
The victims were there to receive a tribute of parliamentarians and to close on a symbolically the work of the Government’s work research commission in the pandemic.
The Senate Commission ended up accusing President Jair Bolsonaro of nine offenses, including a crime against humanity, due to the results of the denialist management of him.
Giovanna, just like the other victims, was not the Senate to exhibit rancor, but to explain his testimony to who would like to hear.
“I leaned on my sister, and she leaned against me,” she said with a broken voice.
She managed to sensitize the whole country.
The interpreter that translated her words into the sign language had to retire because he did not manage to endure the emotion.
In spite of everything, the government’s allied senators, mainly Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of the president, accused the victims of having a history of militancy and had been chosen to finger to wear down to wear the government.
For Giovanna, this insinuation is the umpteenth lack of respect and empathy: “The government wears only, does not need militants of any kind,” rebate.
“Anyone with a minimum of common sense is contrary to this government, it is not necessary to be politicized or being left,” she says.
She confesses that seeing the famous videos of Bolsonaro relativizing the pandemic makes it more harm, so she tries to avoid at all costs.
On one occasion, the president became imitated a patient with a lack of air, causing laughter in the followers of him.
The young woman is now awaited a sea of doubts.
She at the moment she lives with her sister at her grandparents’ house and she hopes to continue studying dentistry.
To go by pulling it summoned on the Internet a crowfunding, waiting to start receiving the promised social aids. And it is that the problem of orphans already entered the radar of public policies, at least in some states of Brazil.
Those of the Northeast Region, governed by progressive parties, joined to create the ‘Northeast Hosting’ program, which provides for a 500-reais (78 euros) pay for orphans under 21 years of age.
The Secretary of Social Assistance of the Government of the State of Rio Grande do Norte, Iris Maria de Oliveira, explains to this newspaper that the main challenge is just detecting those orphans.
“It is difficult to identify them. That the work we are doing now: crossing the mortality data of the health system with the data of the registration of families in a situation of poverty and extreme poverty,” she says.
In the nine states of the northeast region, aid is expected to benefit at least 26,000 young people.
At the moment, the Bolsoonaro Government has no plans to replicate something at the national level, so many will be left out, regrets oliveira: “We are minimally supplying that absence from the federal government. I have no doubt to affirm that. I would have a role
Key, could reach much more scale throughout the national territory, “he says.
Meanwhile, Giovanna and other thousands of children expect a help with which to go to the purchase or finance their studies.
“When you lose a father and a mother being a child you lose everything, your pillars, the people who hold you in life. These help programs are the minimum, and extremely necessary,” she says.
