I actually collaborated with the Evangelical chaplaincy in that hospital for a few years, when I lived at that city. I knew Paulo and we became friends, but I

I actually collaborated with the Evangelical chaplaincy in that hospital for a few years, when I lived at that city. I knew Paulo and we became friends, but I have not kept in contact since I first left São Paulo and got married. When I did return to the city for a few years, I had a child and had a nervous breakdown, so I feared the traffic to reach the hospital. Paulo and Eliana live at the Hospital das clínicas. It is the school‐hospital (or whatever you call that in English) of Brazil’s biggest, oldest, most influential university, the University de São Paulo. It is also Brazil’s biggest hospital, which makes it probably the biggest at least in South America. Quite naturally, it is the reference hospital for the whole of South America. I never knew of family involvement in maintaining them. As mentioned, he lost his mother even before contracting polio; I do not know if his father is still alive, or if he has any other family. Same for Eliana. It would have been quite natural for the Medicine school of USP to care for them as case studios, as polio was once prevalent and a mutant outbreak is still to be feared. But I suspect that, more than that, being a state‐run hospital no one ever thought of ceasing care or returning them to their families, if these are still available. It is not that expensive, as they share a section with other patients — they do have their own room — and need quite common medical equipment. Many doctors and other caregivers, such as chaplains — both are practising Christians, he Evangelical and she Romanist — volunteer time, and a few persons do brave the city’s insane traffic jams (usually measured in peak rush hours kilometers of jams; anything over 100km gets in the news, and that is not rare at all; going over 200km is rare) to visit them in the restricted alloted visit times. This does not mean we have ‘great national healthcare coverage’. Just that these two were blessed by being referred to the Hospital das clínicas de São Paulo. As the cliché goes, it is a country of contrasts, an euphemism for inequality, often cutting in ways that some foreigners have difficulty in grasping.