The Role of Income on the Relationship Between the Brazilian Cash Transfer Program (Programa Bolsa Família) and Intimate Partner Violence: Evidence From a Multigroup Path Analysis

Excess suicides in Brazil: Inequalities according to age groups and regions during the COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic has already claimed more than six million direct deaths. Low-and middle-income countries, such Brazil, were severely hit, not only due to direct effects on mortality, but also for its indirect effects on other causes of deaths.

AIMS

The objective of this study was to estimate the excess suicides in Brazil and evaluate patterns within and between its regions during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

METHOD

The observed suicides are gathered from the mortality information system of the Brazilian Ministry of Health. The estimates of expected suicides, according to sex, age group, bimonthly period and region, were reached through quasi-Poisson generalized additive models, with adjustment for overdispersion. The analyses were performed in R software, version 3.6.1 and RStudio, version 1.2.1335.

RESULTS

From March 2020 to December 2020, 10,409 suicides were observed in Brazil, resulting in an overall decrease of 13%, in comparison to the expected rate for the period. There were excess suicides of 26% in men from the Northern region in the 60 years and more age group, as well as in women from the Northern region in the 30 to 59 years age group in two consecutive bimonthly periods. Excess suicides of 40% was also observed in women in the 60 years and more age group from the Northeastern region.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite the overall decrease in suicides in Brazil over the period assessed, substantial excess suicides were observed in different age groups and sexes from the Northern and Northeastern regions of the country, which are regions that are historically more prone to health and socioeconomic inequalities.

A diagonal and social protection plus approach to meet the challenges of the COVID-19 syndemic: cash transfers and intimate partner violence interventions in Latin America

Latin America has been particularly hard hit by the COVID-19 syndemic, including the associated economic fallout that has threatened the livelihoods of most families. Social protection platforms and policies should have a crucial role in safeguarding individual and family wellbeing; however, the response has been insufficient to address the scale of the crisis. In this Viewpoint, we focus on two policy challenges of the COVID-19 syndemic: rapidly and effectively providing financial support to the many families that lost livelihoods, and responding to and mitigating the increased risk of intimate partner violence (IPV). We argue that building programmatic linkages between social protection platforms, particularly cash transfers, and IPV prevention, mitigation, and response services, creates synergies that can promote freedom from both poverty and violence.