Ministry of Health is unaware of the quantity of vaccines, expiration dates, and has not scheduled purchases for 2023, says Chioro.

247 - Former Health Minister and member of the transition cabinet on the subject, Arthur Chioro stated this Monday (12) to CNN Brasil that the Ministry of Health of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), headed by Marcelo Queiroga, has no control over the stock of vaccines - including those for Covid-19 - available and their expiration dates.

According to Chioro, the ministry doesn't know, for example, how many vaccines it has in storage and how many have already been sent to states and municipalities. "The situation regarding the management of the Ministry of Health is a true disaster. I say this because sensitive data, such as what the vaccine stock is, what the expiration date of these vaccines is, what the quantity of vaccines is in central storage, and how many have already been made available to states, simply doesn't exist. The Ministry of Health simply doesn't have this information."

"We know that three million doses of Covid vaccines have already expired, according to data from the Federal Court of Accounts. We know that millions of doses are about to expire – we don't know how many because the data hasn't been provided. We have strong suspicions, which will be confirmed starting in January, that there are millions, something probably exceeding 10 million doses expiring in the first three weeks [of January]. It's unknown, there's no inventory, no control over the quantity of vaccine doses," he added.

The former minister reported that, initially, the transition team believed the Ministry of Health was resistant to sending the requested data. However, over time, it became clear that the ministry was simply not sending the required data because it did not possess it. "We suspected it was more resistance [to sharing the data], but we're realizing that's not the case. Whether it's their own refusal to provide this data to the Federal Court of Accounts, or the way they've been interacting, somehow willing to send the data but always incomplete. Last week, for example, when another batch of requested information arrived, it said: 'the information is attached,' and the attachments didn't come. Deep down, what the municipalities and states are telling us is that there's a real lack of control. The DataSUS information systems have been destroyed since the blackout at the beginning of 2022, and with that, control has been lost. We can't have a secure basis for planning. In other words, the new team that will take over the ministry in January will have to set up a crisis cabinet, make a great effort together with states and municipalities to align the information to ensure sound decision-making. And all this can't wait, because the situation is very critical."

Chioro also said that the ministry has not planned the purchase of new vaccines for 2023. "To make matters worse, there is a very critical situation, which is the fact that the Ministry of Health has not planned the purchase of vaccines for 2023. There is a contract in force with Pfizer that would allow us to request bivalent vaccines, for children, etc. But the other vaccines have not yet been requested from the public laboratories that produce them. Therefore, it is a very critical situation. We don't know what we have, we haven't planned what is needed, and the new government will have to put things in order, reschedule, and at the same time, carry out campaigns, intensify communication, track down those who have missed vaccinations, identify children. In short, there is a set of measures that will have to be adopted to return to the levels of vaccination coverage that we had until 2015 and, in the case of the Covid vaccine, to achieve vaccination coverage that can actually protect the population."

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