Brazil's federal court Friday fined Rio de Janeiro's health chief for failing to keep all healthcare units open as the dengue fever epidemic is raging through the city.
Judge Regina de Carvalho ordered Rio's Secretary of Health Jacob Kligerman to pay 10,000 reals (6,000 U.S. dollars) while it ordered all healthcare units in the city to stay open 24 hours a day amid the dengue fever outbreak.
Under the court ruling, the fine will be deducted from Kligerman's pay and donated to the Fund against Poverty and Social Inequalities.
Up to 1,664 new cases of the mosquito-borne disease were registered in the city Thursday, bringing the total cases to 55,453 since the beginning of the year, local media reported. Fifty-one people have died.
Some healthcare units failed to stay open 24 hours because they were located in high-crime areas, local media said.
On Thursday, confrontations between police and drug trafficking gangs in the slum Vila Cruzeiro caused panic among patients and physicians at a hospital in the northern part of the city.
Source: Xinhua
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