Ailing Indigenous children get needed care: Brazil

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A group of Yanomami children sleeps in blue hammocks in a hospital in Brazil's Amazon. Some have pneumonia, while others have malaria. Some have even been bitten by snakes. They are all malnourished due to mining and logging in the thickly forested area, which is riddled with food shortages.

Malnutrition and malaria cases in the region have surged in recent weeks, prompting President Lula Inacio Lula da Silva's new leftist government to declare a health emergency.

Three-quarters of the approximately 60 Indigenous children being treated at the San Antonio children's hospital in Boa Vista, in the northern state of Roraima, are Yanomami, with eight of them in intensive care, as per official data.

The vast majority of children are suffering from "moderate to severe malnutrition," complicated by other ailments including pneumonia, malaria, and the stomach flu, pediatrician Eugenio Patricio said as quoted by AFP.

"These patients, due to malnutrition, don't have enough in the tank to fight infections. So the consequences are far more serious, and some end up in intensive care," he added.

It is worth noting that the San Antonio hospital is the only one in the state that can serve children under the age of 12 and is located on the country's northern border with Venezuela and Guyana.

Many of the Indigenous patients must be flown in from their remote bush settlements to get there.

Patricio further noted that most Yanomami youngsters, who are normally eight years old or younger, are around half the normal weight for their age – and often even less.

"When they arrive here, they are quite weak," he explained.

While the most critical cases are being treated at the San Antonio hospital, other Indigenous kids and adults are taking the necessary medical care at a facility in Boa Vista.

This is happening shortly after Brazilian federal police said it is conducting an investigation into a "genocide" against the Yanomami people after it emerged that nearly a hundred children from the Indigenous group lost their lives. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had accused his former President Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right administration of committing the "genocide".

Last week, Lula's government said that 99 Yanomami children under the age of five had died in 2022 on Brazil's largest Indigenous reservation, mainly due to malnutrition, pneumonia, and malaria.

Shockingly, conditions on the Yanomami reservation have become increasingly violent, with illegal miners regularly killing Indigenous residents, sexually abusing women and children, and contaminating the area's rivers with the mercury used to separate gold from sediment.

Experts have repeatedly warned that the rise in illegal mining in the Amazon has accelerated the development of diseases like malaria and TB, in addition to Covid-19.

The country's Supreme Court had ordered that gold miners in the area be removed, but the Bolsonaro government, which pushed mining and agribusiness on Indigenous grounds, never followed.

Today, the new government headed by Lula is exerting strained efforts to save Brazil's largest Indigenous reservation and its people.