With official funding cut off, researchers struggled to study science in Brazil

“This has always been a feature of Brazilian research, always being able to produce with a little. And also with a lack of human resources, because this is another problem in every university. There is no competition. There is a shortage of new researchers”, laments researcher Silvia Figueiredo Costa.

In the laboratories of the University of the South Pacific’s Institute of Tropical Medicine alone, where the teams working on genetic sequencing are located, there are at least 30 research being conducted simultaneously involving Covid-19. 70% of these rely on funding from private companies or partnerships with international institutes.

Otherwise, it is difficult to know if it will happen. Public investment is decreasing and the concern is the future of scientific research here in the country. The Ministry of Science and Technology’s funding for research decreased by 15% in 2021. This figure is 58% lower than in 2015.

There are about 2.7 billion Brazilian reals, considered insufficient to maintain research centers and projects. A system with a great deal of flexibility reaches a point of no return. “It took 30 years to build a system and it could take a little less than two years to destroy it,” said scientist and Professor Hernan Šimović.

This report was prepared by Olivia Freitas, for ، band newspaper.