Brazil's military bought penile implants and 35,000 doses of Viagra with public money, say opposition lawmakers demanding answers from President Bolsonaro

• A Brazilian lawmaker said he compiled public spending data that shows the military bought Viagra.
• According to him, the military spent public funds on 35,000 Viagra pills and 60 penile implants.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is facing fresh scrutiny from his opponents after a lawmaker said he discovered evidence that Brazil's military had approved and paid for over 35,000 Viagra pills and 60 penile implants.

Federal Deputy Elias Vaz said on Tuesday that he obtained spending data from Brazil's government transparency portal, which showed that the country's air force was given 28,320 of the impotence pills through eight purchases starting in 2020, while the army and navy received 5,000 and 2,000 respectively, according to local outlet UOL News.

"We need to understand why the Bolsonaro administration is spending public money to buy Viagra, and in such a high amount," Vaz said, calling on the country's Ministry of Defence to explain the purchases, per UOL News.

Vaz said that the documents listed the tablets as Sildenafil — the generic name of the drug — instead of specifically mentioning Viagra — the brand name for the drug, Agence France Presse reported

The Brazilian military said in a statement that it bought the Sildenafil pills to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension, or high blood pressure in the lungs caused by the obstruction of small arteries, per AFP.

But according to a report by Brazilian newspaper O Globo, the dosage ordered by the military — 25 mg and 50 mg — is typically used to treat erectile dysfunction, not high blood pressure, which calls for dosages of 20 mg.

Another opposition politician, Marcelo Frexio, the federal deputy of the Brazilian Socialist Party, tweeted that he and Vaz had asked the Federal Public Ministry to investigate the purchases.

"Public money, which comes out of the pockets of all of us Brazilians, has to be used to serve the public interest," he wrote.

Later that day, Vaz also said that public spending data shows the Brazilian army paid for 60 silicone penis prosthetics worth 3.5 million Brazilian reals, or $748,681, since 2020.

"The Brazilian people struggle to get medicines... and yet a group [of people] is treated with expensive prostheses," he said, per AFP.

In a statement to G1 Globo, a local news outlet, the Brazilian army said it had only purchased three of the prosthetics in 2021 and used them for patients under its army health fund. The other prosthetics listed in the data represented an "estimate" for the prices of the implants, it said.

The statement didn't address any penile implant purchases from 2020.

Other politicians have joined the outrage aimed at Bolsonaro's administration and the Brazilian armed forces.

"The curious case of a president who is slow to buy vaccines for the population and very fast to buy Viagra for military men," tweeted a councilor for the city of Niterói known as Professor Tulio.

Vice President of the Democratic Labour Party, Ciro Gomes, also tweeted: "Unless they prove that they are developing some secret weapon — capable of revolutionizing the international arms industry — it will be difficult to justify buying 35,000 units of an erectile dysfunction drug."