The Brazilian government has declared a state of emergency in the Yanomami Indigenous Reserve, the largest in Brazil, due to the lack of medical assistance for the population, who suffer from child malnutrition and malaria.
Brazilian President Luis Lula da Silva, who is visiting the region this Saturday to understand the plight of the Yanomami children, has also set up a National Coordinating Commission to combat the lack of medical aid to the indigenous community, according to what was published in an extra edition of the Staatsblad on Friday evening, according to EFE.
The health emergency declaration was signed by the Minister of Health, Nísia Trindade, who will also set up a public health emergency operations center to “plan, organize, coordinate and monitor” the measures taken to resolve the situation.
“We will join forces to guarantee life and overcome this crisis,” Lula da Silva said on social networks today, on her way to the Amazon state of Roraima, on the border with Venezuela, where a large part of the Yanomami area is located.
The leader of the Workers’ Party and the President of Brazil is accompanied by the Minister of Indigenous Peoples, Sônia Guajajara, who warned of the “humanitarian and health crisis” facing the Yanomami, also affected by the strong presence of informal miners, mainly seeking to gold.
“It is very sad to know that indigenous peoples, including 570 Yanomami children, died of starvation during the last government,” far-right Jair Bolsonaro denounced the minister on her Twitter profile, after calling it “intolerable.” classified for their “relatives dying of malnutrition”.
The Yanomami Indigenous Reserve is a vast area of nearly 10 million hectares and is currently home to more than 30,400 people, according to official records.
In the 1990s, the Yanomami lost a fifth of their population to diseases imported by miners, whose activity Bolsonaro sought to legalize, as part of his policy of defending the exploitation of natural resources in the Amazon.
Lula pledged that during his term, which ends in January 2027, he will protect indigenous peoples and end the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, which reached record levels of deforestation while Bolsonaro was in power.
Source: DN
