Pill-Popping Bolsonaro Sows Covid Chaos at Brazil’s Hospitals
- Doctors say they feel pressured to prescribe unproven drugs
- President takes hydroxychloroquine, says he’s on the mend
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Brazil’s public hospital doctors say they’re being pressured into handing out hydroxychloroquine by both patients and colleagues, even as a debate rages over its efficacy and safety.
“I was called in several times to stop fights,” said Joao Assy, an infectious disease specialist in Santarem, a coastal city in the hard-hit northern state of Para. He and fellow doctors circulated a petition urging medical professionals in the city not to prescribe hydroxychloroquine and its sister drug, chloroquine. But some colleagues disagreed strongly, and quarrels with his patients turned ugly.