About 21 million families across Brazil receive monthly payments as part of the Bolsa Família scheme Credit: Bruna Prado/Getty Images
By Hannah Crowe, The Telegraph, Image: Bruna Prado/Getty Images, February 10, 2025
The scheme was launched to reduce poverty, but experts never anticipated the remarkable effects it would have on the country’s health
Crislaine Souza lives with her husband and one-year-old son in a rural community in Ourolândia, a municipality in Brazil’s north-east that suffered centuries of neglect.
She is unemployed and, though her husband works as an electrician and does what he can to support his wife and children, the family is among the poorest in the country.
The family is on the brink – her husband and her one-year-old son are both deficient in iron, vitamin B12 and vitamin D – but it has a lifeline.
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