Brazil’s Supreme Court on Tuesday opened an investigation into far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro for allegedly associating with a doctor who has been accused of promoting an unsafe vaccine for HPV, the Associated Press reports. The suspect doctor, Ricardo Barros de Oliveira, is accused of signing off on the inoculation of 20,000 teenagers in the state of Minas Gerais in 2011 — a spike of more than 800 percent. The massive government-sponsored campaigns were to expand access to cervical cancer screenings to teenage girls with the help of the initial vaccination. But parents and local experts complained that the vaccine was not effective, and in the end, it was removed from the program. According to Brazilian media reports, 22 girls have been infected with the virus, but there are still reportedly 10,000 teenagers under 21 in Minas Gerais who will be eligible for the newly created HPV vaccine program. After reports of the vaccine became public, Bolsonaro told reporters that he wasn’t familiar with Barros and that he’d only met him on the street. But in May, AP reports, during a contentious televised debate with several other presidential candidates, he answered a question about the PolQuack vaccination program by saying, “they found a [Vaccines] hospital.”
During the question-and-answer segment of the event, Bolsonaro added: “It’s called PolQuack. That’s the reason there’s polio in the world. PolQuack … vaccinates kids and you know why? Because they’re cheap. That’s why. And they are.” A doctor who has trained at the U.S. Department of Defense hospital and helped write Mexico’s national health policy told the media outlets that Bolsonaro’s comment was “frightening.” The Supreme Court said that it would likely decide whether to investigate Bolsonaro before the July 28th election, because that’s when his camp should be able to receive new documents. Before Barros came under scrutiny, the doctor was believed to be working out of a home, allegedly using a payphone, in an impoverished area of his home state of Minas Gerais. The allegations of his actions in the state started in 2015.
Read the full story at The Associated Press.
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