Text: Marco Borba Images: Eduardo Soares Doctor Drauzio Varella gave a real open class on public health on Tuesday, 10/24, during the lecture “Quality of Life and Mental Health in the new normal”, promoted by the Administration Secretariat of Osasco City Hall as a tribute to Employee Day Public, to be celebrated on 10/28. The event took place at the Glória Giglio Municipal Theater (Avenida dos Autonomistas, 1533, Vila Campesina) and was attended by Mayor Rogério Lins, municipal secretaries, councilors and dozens of civil servants. Participation was subject to prior registration.
During an interview before the lecture, the doctor warned about the challenges faced by families and governments in dealing with the worsening of anxiety and depression in recent years, especially after the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, a period in which thousands of people around the world had to go through the so-called social “confinement”.
“In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) already warned that depression would be one of the main causes of absenteeism at work. Then came the pandemic, which worsened this situation. Today, the main problem is anxiety, due to the period of social isolation.”
For Drauzio Varella, due to this worsening, health systems will need to review their mental health care policies. “It will take a change in public health policy to help these families in this new normal. Mental health has always been the Achilles heel of the Unified Health System (SUS), supplementary health and health plans as well. In hospitals, you go, do catheterization and whatever else you need. Now, if you arrive with a psychiatric disorder, it gets a little complicated. There is no structure for this, neither does the SUS. The CAPS (Psychosocial Care Centers) operate overloaded, because the number of people with psychiatric disorders today is brutal. The SUS has to adapt to this new normality. And how are we going to treat these people? If you diagnose it early, as with any disease, it becomes easier. A person with initial depression, the first symptoms, can only be resolved with psychotherapy. Now, those more established conditions need psychiatric treatment. And we don't have enough psychiatrists. The number of psychiatrists in Brazil is small in relation to the size of the challenge. And then you have to give medication, and the one available in the SUS are not the best drugs, in general. So how do you follow these people? We are not equipped. This needs to receive special attention from the Ministry of Health and municipal health departments, because it is a very serious problem,” he warned.
In his talk, the doctor also addressed the excessive use of social networks, which has forced people to spend long hours focused on work, forgetting about their social life, such as talking to friends and family.
During the event, the mayor presented the doctor with a plaque honoring his relevant services in the area of public health in the country and thanking him for accepting the invitation to the lecture aimed at municipal employees.
Trajectory
Drauzio Varella is a cancerologist graduated from the University of São Paulo (USP). In the early 1970s, he worked with professor Vicente Amato Neto in the area of infectious diseases at the Hospital do Servidor Público de São Paulo. For 20 years, he directed the Immunology service at the São Paulo Cancer Hospital and, from 1990 to 1992, the Cancer service at the Ipiranga Hospital, at the time belonging to the National Institute of Medical Assistance for Social Security (INAMPS).
He was one of the pioneers in the treatment of AIDS, especially Kaposi's sarcoma, in Brazil. In 1986, under the guidance of journalist Fernando Vieira de Melo, he began campaigns aimed at educating the population about AIDS prevention.
On TV Globo, she participated in several journalistic series about the human body, first aid, pregnancy, combating smoking, family planning and transplants, among others.
In 1989, he began research work on the prevalence of the HIV virus in the prison population of the Casa de Detenção do Carandiru. From that year, until the prison was closed in September 2002, he worked as a volunteer doctor. Currently, she does the same work at the São Paulo Women's Penitentiary.
In the Amazon, in the lower Rio Negro region, Drauzio Varella runs a bioprospecting project for Brazilian plants with the aim of obtaining extracts to test them experimentally on malignant tumor cells and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This project, supported by Fapesp, is carried out in the laboratories of Universidade Paulista (UNIP) in collaboration with Hospital Sírio-Libanês.
Drauzio Varella also has a spell in Osasco. When he was 11 years old, he worked in one of the city's cinemas, helping his aunt sell sweets.