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BrazilMalnutrition, viruses and malaria are decimating Yanomami children
Last year, around 100 indigenous children under the age of 5 died in northern Brazil from infections and lack of food, the health ministry said.
An indigenous people, the Yanomami live in an isolated territory, straddling the Brazilian states of Roraima and Amazonas, but also in part of Venezuela.
AFP
A hundred young children died in 2022 in the Yanomami indigenous territory in northern Brazil, victims of malnutrition, pneumonia, malaria or other infections, we learned on Saturday from the Brazilian Ministry of Health.
A total of 99 children under the age of five, including 67 under the age of one, died last year in this isolated territory in the middle of the virgin forest and as big as Portugal. Among the causes of death, pneumonia, diarrhea and gastroenteritis probably of infectious origin, as well as haemorrhage or severe malnutrition.
Lula wants to ‘treat the natives like human beings’
Some 11,530 confirmed cases of malaria were recorded in the territory in 2022, most however in the age group over 50, according to the same source. Among the children under five who were victims of malaria, 1,678 were between one and four years old and 312 under one year old, according to the ministry, which said in a press release “aware of the emergency” in the territory and mentioned the presence of an “assessment mission” on the spot.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, invested just three weeks ago, went to Boa Vista on Saturday, in the state of Roraima, in the north of the country, where part of the territory is located. yanomami. “What I saw shocked me. I came here to say that we will treat our natives like human beings,” he said on his Twitter account, reporting on his visit, accompanied by the Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Sonia Guajajara.
This Saturday, the newly elected President Lula traveled to Boa Vista, in the state of Roraima, in the north of the country, where part of the Yanomami territory is located.
AFP/BRAZILIAN PRESIDENCY/RICARDO STUCKERT
At the mercy of gold diggers and deforestation
Some 30,400 indigenous people live in Yanomami lands, straddling the Roraima and Amazonas states, but also in part of neighboring Venezuela. The populations of these lands, supposed to be inviolable and where all mining is prohibited, are facing difficulties in feeding themselves due to the destruction of the tropical forest where they normally find their means of subsistence.
According to Yanomami chiefs, some 20,000 illegal gold diggers have invaded their territory, killing natives, sexually abusing women and teenage girls and contaminating their rivers with the mercury that separates gold from sediment.
The Lula government this week launched the first operations on the ground to combat deforestation, after four years of massive destruction under the government of Jair Bolsonaro, whose attitude has always been hostile towards indigenous peoples.
(AFP)
