No other country in Latin America has been so badly affected by corona marked as Brazil. Additional suffering is caused the increasing hunger, from which 10 million Brazilians* more are affected than just two years ago. terre des hommes schweiz Terre des Hommes Suisse and its Brazilian partner organizations provide psychosocial support in the event of death and help with food baskets.
More than 4‘000 Coronadeaths within one day were registered in Brazil at the beginning of April. The third corona wave, which has been building up since December, is hitting harder than ever before before. The new virus variant P1 has led to an appalling situation in large parts of the country: Hospitals are overcrowdedhospitals are overcrowded, often lacking sedatives and anesthetics and In many hospitals, all ventilators are occupied. Dhe emergency care of the seriously ill can be thus no longer be guaranteed, countless people die without medical help. Health workers are exhausted and suffering from serious psychological stress.
State aid reduced
Because President Jair Bolsonaro still does not believe in a lockdown and there are no uniform protective measures in the protective measures the virus continues to spread almost unhindered. Around 380,000 corona deaths have been reported so far. And the current rate of vaccination indicates that not indicate that there will soon be an decline in the 50,000 to 80,000 new infections per day that have been will. The spread of the virus has brought Brazil to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
To make matters worse, hunger in Brazil has increased sharply again in recent years and has been further exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. Between 2004 and 2013, the Zero Hunger Program (” Fome Zero”) under President Lula da Silva achieved significant improvements in the nutrition of the population. Since 2015, however, state support programs have been increasingly reduced – most significantly since Bolsonaro came to power of Bolsonaro in January 2019. Since then, the number of people actually suffering from hunger in Brazil has risen sharply. According to a recently published Study by the Brazilian Research Network for Food Sovereignty and Securitywhich the renowned Friedrich Ebert Foundation was also involved in, almost 117 million Brazilians were in a situation of food insecurity at the end of 2020. 19.1 million suffer from severe hunger, around 10 million more than two years ago.
Food baskets against hunger
ter of the hommes sswitzerland reacts together with Ter of the Hommes Suisse in the Romandie and the local partner organizations to the dramatic situation. In our project regions, we provide psychosocial support for young people and their families who have been severely affected by coronavirus-related deaths. In this way, the negative psychological consequences of traumatic experiences can be refurbished become. We are also continuing our educational work on coronavirus prevention and distributing masks and hygiene products to protect against Infections.
Five of our partner organizations have also responded to the increasing Hunger reacts. The grassroots organizations Centro Sabiá and ASPTA and the MOC, SASOP and EFASE consortium, which are all active in the field of agroecological education and networking of jyoungen Bäur*inside in the rural regions of north-eastern Brazil distribute food baskets to needy families in the surrounding villages. In the state of Bahia, for example, more than 12,000 families benefited from this in 2020.
Since in many states schools were closed and and switched to distance learning, many disadvantaged disadvantaged children and young people were excluded from education from one day to the next. excluded from education. Our partnerorganizations support therefore destitute families therein, their children access to digital distance learning enable. So far, almost 5‘000 children and young people from these measuresssbenefited from these measures.
Where the state has withdrawn and is inactive, are social movements are once again in demand and are doing their utmost to physical and psychtion of need. terre des hommes schweiz supports its partner organizations in Brazil with additional funds. Richard Geer
