The current president Jair Bolsonaro "faced the [Covid-19] pandemic in a criminal manner, and is directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of the more than 678,000 deaths from Covid," Lula said. | Photo: Brasil de Fato

Brasilia, August 7 (RHC)-- On the occasion of Brazil's National Health Day, which was celebrated this Friday, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva denounced what he called the criminal policy of current President Jair Bolsonaro, and said that "it is urgent to resume the successful public policies" of the Workers' Party governments, from 2003 until 2016.

Lula's intervention takes place in the Free, Democratic and Popular Health Day, an initiative of the "Frente pela Vida" -- the alliance of parties and organizations that carries Lula as a candidate for the Brazilian Presidency in next October's elections.

The Conference was conceived, according to its organizers, as a space for the search for solutions to the problems accumulated and enhanced by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In his words, the former president ratified that "taking care of the health of our people will be, more than ever, a central challenge for my government," while denouncing that "the deterioration of living conditions promoted by the current President is a sad reality", so he called, "urgently [to] resume the successful public policies that we have implemented in this country".

According to Lula, current President Jair Bolsonaro "faced the [COVID-19] pandemic in a criminal manner, and is directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of the more than 678,000 deaths from COVID." 

He also said that Bolsonaro "opened the door to lobbyists who tried to sell vaccines at overpriced prices, as demonstrated by the Senate's CPI [Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry]," which is investigating irregularities and alleged corruption in the purchase of anticovid drugs by successive administrations of the Ministry of Public Health under the current government.

Lula also denounced that Bolsonaro's mismanagement "destroyed the policies we made for the Health Industrial Economic Complex.  Now, we are forced to import basic products and stand in line to buy what we used to produce here in Brazil."

The "Frente pela Vida" candidate expressed that "to fulfill the mission of guaranteeing health for all, from vaccines to transplants, it is necessary to increase investment in public health.  And this is a commitment I am making to Brazil and the Brazilian people."

He advanced that "it is necessary to place our teams of doctors, nurses, dentists and community health workers in every territory of this country, to prevent diseases, to expand the coverage of all vaccines and to guarantee the basic treatment of most of the diseases of our population".

Lula is leading most of the polls to beat the current right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro in next October's presidential elections.