The United States sent millions of doses of hydroxychloroquine to Brazil. Months later, they are still stored

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Sao Paulo (CNN) - This was the type of gift that should have come with a receipt for your return.

The Donald Trump government's donation to Brazil of 2 million doses of hydroxychloroquine - one of the few countries that still recommends the drug to treat covid-19 - has not been affected since his arrival, Brazilian officials told CNN. Large amounts of the pills are still stored in the Brazilian megacity of São Paulo, and a former health minister believes they will eventually have to be destroyed.

The fate of the pills in Brazil is appropriate given their medical uselessness against covid-19: study after study has shown that hydroxychloroquine does not work to treat the coronavirus and can be harmful. However, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro insists that hydroxychloroquine helped him recover from a two-week infection, and the Brazilian Ministry of Health reported that doctors prescribe the drug to treat mild cases, even for pregnant women. Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus infections in the country is skyrocketing.

So why haven't the pills been distributed?

• A look at the cult of hydroxychloroquine in Brazil

The drug arrived in Brazil on May 31. At the time, the White House said the delivery, issued when multiple studies had already shown the drug to be ineffective against covid-19, if not dangerous, "would be used as a prophylactic" to help defend nurses, doctors and Brazilian health professionals against the virus. It would also be used as a treatment to treat Brazilians who become infected. It was also said that the drug would be part of a study there and that fans would also be donated.

But the delivery was soon stored near the São Paulo airport, said Renato Strauss, a spokesman for the health ministry. Two months later, the pills are still in a logistics center, according to Strauss.

The way American medicine was configured may have sealed his fate before his arrival. Hydroxychloroquine came in packages of one hundred 400-mg pills, according to the state secretary of health association, CONASS. They must be broken down into smaller numbers before they can be distributed, Strauss said.

That work would be carried out in a laboratory of the Brazilian army in Rio de Janeiro and in other official laboratories, he added. Strauss did not explain why that has not yet happened, although experts say this could be because the process is expensive and time consuming. Another spokesperson for the Ministry of Health said that Anvisa, the Brazilian health regulatory body, gave permission for the process to start last week.

A spokesman for the United States Embassy in Brasilia declined to answer questions and referred further inquiries to the White House, which did not respond to emails.

New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, however, noted that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has revoked authorization for hydroxychloroquine as a treatment against covid- 19. "President Trump clearly does not care about good medical advice. If it did, we would have taken steps to stop the covid-19 outbreak before it killed 150,000 Americans, and the administration was not knowingly exporting a therapy that could negatively affect thousands of Brazilians. It is reprehensible, ”Menéndez told CNN.

The United States' donation went to a country where the drug was already overflowing. The Brazilian army and state maintain an annual reserve to fight malaria, but due to false claims that hydroxychloroquine would help defeat the coronavirus, both increased their manufacture and in April ordered a large number of precursor ingredients from India.

Following scientific guidance, many Brazilian doctors have stopped prescribing hydroxychloroquine despite the government's enthusiasm for it. But in a sign of how widespread Bolsonaro's support for the drug has been, a recent survey of doctors across Brazil reported that half of them felt pressured by patients to administer the drug ineffectively.

A former health minister, Luiz Mandetta, fired by Bolsonaro in April in part for the president's support for hydroxychloroquine, described the public demand for hydroxychloroquine as "false hope." He said the president knew from the start that science did not support his choice of the drug, although Bolsonaro has recently insisted that it helped him medically.

"It is just a false hope," he told CNN. "Poor people have a hard time running the health system and say 'at least I have this.' It's more like a placebo, something you can take and thank (Bolsonaro) for, "he said. "It is a political choice, nothing about health. He uses the drug to tell people they can go back to work.

Bolsonaro has recently said that the use of the drug is a matter between the patient and the doctor, but has insisted that it has helped cure him of a two-week infection.

He believes that America's gift will likely be destroyed after a few years. I don't think there are enough people to take all those pills. They will probably keep them in some laboratory, in some airport, and they will probably have to destroy it, "he said.

The country's surplus hydroxychloroquine comes amid an urgent need for other medications to help covid-19 patients. Pedro Archer, director of the Rio de Janeiro doctors' union and ICU doctor for months in the pandemic, said he feared that the focus on hydroxychloroquine had diverted government attention from obtaining drugs that coronavirus patients really they need.

"Midazolam, fentanyl, norepinephrine," he said, referring to the vital medications used to keep patients alive and comfortable in an ICU. "Public health is always running out of these drugs."

And he added: "If the United States wants to help Brazil, send these medicines, not hydroxychloroquine."

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