'Health workers are too scared to enter': the fight to treat HIV in a So Paulo favela

[Judi Lynn]

Young people with HIV in Brazil’s poorest favelas often have no support, but in Boi Malhado, one team is determined to provide vital help

Words and photographs by Sarah Johnson
Tue 3 Mar 2020 02.00 EST

On a hill overlooking a middle-class neighbourhood and a hospital lies one of São Paulo’s slums – home to about 300 families trying to eke out a living in the largest city in Brazil. Here in Boi Malhado, ramshackle dwellings built with planks of wood and corrugated iron are perched precariously on the hillside. Only recently, one house belonging to a mother and her newborn baby collapsed. Both survived but the remains are there for everyone to see.

Children run up and down narrow passageways between laundry lines and live electric wires; sewers are a hole in the ground covered by a piece of wood; and water access is sporadic – it’s common for the community to go without for days. “Our government is very unfair,” says resident Mariangela Ferreira, 35. “We pay our taxes and we don’t even have the basics.”

Inhabitants face all manner of health problems, including HIV. It is this that has brought Sandra Santos, a healthcare professional who specialises in educating young people about the virus, here on a Saturday afternoon. Santos, who works at Emilio Ribas hospital is convinced that it’s areas like this where she must work.

But it’s challenging. The poverty is breathtaking and Santos had to go through an intermediary to ask the drug dealers that rule this area to allow her into the slum. “Healthcare professionals won’t enter because they’re too scared,” she says. “But these are the people who we can’t reach and who need our help.”

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/03/health-workers-scared-enter-treat-hiv-sao-paulo-favelas