Covid-19 in Brazil: 'My mum was used as a guinea pig'
[Image description: Irene (centre) and Norberto (to her left) with three female relatives in the former's 50th birthday party; Irene and Norbeto would have celebrated their 54th wedding anniversary in May.]
A Brazilian healthcare provider is accused of giving unproven drugs to Covid-19 patients and conducting experiments on elderly people without their relatives' consent. The allegations have been linked to deaths that, families say, could have been prevented.
Katia Castilho's grief keeps her awake at night. In March, Norberto, her father, was admitted to a public hospital in São Paulo with Covid-19. Brazil, which has been hit hard by the pandemic, was then at the height of its second wave, with daily deaths numbering 4,000.
Days later, Ms Castilho's mother, too, began to show symptoms of the disease. Irene, unlike Norberto, had access to a private healthcare provider, Prevent Senior, one of the country's largest, with more than half a million customers.
The Castilho family contacted the company, and were sent a so-called "Covid Kit", which included hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and ivermectin, despite there being no scientific evidence that those drugs are beneficial in the treatment of the virus.
Irene got worse and worse, and Ms Castilho and her two sisters decided to take their mother to a Prevent Senior-owned hospital. But, to their surprise, Ms Castilho says, Irene was sent back home without being examined.
Her condition worsened further overnight. By morning, Irene was struggling to breathe even with an oxygen cylinder. The family went back to the hospital, and she was finally admitted.
On that same day, Norberto died.
Meanwhile at the hospital, Irene was kept in a small ward, where staff rarely came to check on her, Ms Castilho says. The sisters took turns to make sure the oxygen mask stayed on.
One day, Ms Castilho noticed that nurses were giving Irene a thick solution. She says she was told it was flutamide, a type of hormone used in prostate cancer. Flutamide can potentially lead to liver failure in certain patients, and Irene was a liver cancer survivor. The sisters say they had expressly told the hospital not to give her this drug.
Irene had been in hospital for nearly 10 days when she was taken to intensive care. Her organs began to fail, she developed deep-vein thrombosis, and after three weeks, was infected with a bacteria common in hospitals. She did not survive.
The negligence, Ms Castilho believes, started the day Irene was sent the "Covid Kit", as many scientists were already expressing profound misgivings about the drugs, and continued as doctors prescribed unproven medicine instead of opting for more costly intensive care treatment.
Now, more deaths are being blamed on the company's medical practices.
A Senate inquiry into the government's handling of the pandemic heard allegations that the company was trying to endorse unproven treatments associated with President Jair Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly dismissed Covid-19.
Bruna Morato, a lawyer representing 12 whistleblowers, told the inquiry doctors were threatened and fired if they disagreed with the unproven drugs. The firm is also accused of failing to mention Covid-19 deaths in patients' records to hide the scale of the problem.
