"It feels like we're going back in time": rights of children with Congenital Zika Virus Syndrome and their caregivers in the face of two epidemics

Abstract

Over the past few months living and facing the COVID-19 pandemic, the fact that the virus and its spread are not democratic has already been proven: the most common profile among victims of the new disease are black, indigenous, and poor people. In addition, it is also racialized and people on the periphery have been experiencing the greatest economic and social impact of the pandemic. COVID-19, in this sense, seems to be consistent with other documented health crises, making its way along the wide avenues of inequality. In this article, we seek to describe how the paths of inequality traced by COVID-19 intersect with the paths of another epidemic, which is now almost invisible in the public eye: that of the Zika Virus. Based on field diaries from research carried out in Recife / PE between 2016 and 2020, we seek to show how families previously affected by Zika now face COVID-19, pointing to structural factors common to the two health crises that put the same people at greater risk of exposure.