Government sets up field hospital for indigenous people

Military personnel from the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) have begun to set up, in Boa Vista, the first of the field hospitals that the federal government plans to use to treat Indians of the Yanomami ethnic group.

According to the national secretary of Indigenous Health, Ricardo Weibe Tapeba, more than a thousand people with serious health problems have already been transferred from the Yanomami Indigenous Land, near the border with Venezuela, to the capital of Roraima – a trip that, in medium size, lasts, on average, two hours.

“We were able to witness the state of calamity that the (Yanomami) territory is in. It is a war scenario. Our indigenous health unit, in Surucucu, as well as our Casai (Indigenous Health Support House) here, in Boa Vista, they are practically concentration camps”, declared the secretary when talking to journalists, in the capital of Roraima this Tuesday (24). The information is from Agência Brasil.

There were 583 people staying at the Boa Vista health unit, where some of the sick Yanomami are being transferred to receive adequate medical treatment. Of the total, 271 indigenous people were patients; 257 companions and 55 Indians who have already been discharged and are waiting for an opportunity to return to their territories.

“We want to relieve the space (of Casai de Boa Vista), because the conditions are unhealthy”, said the national secretary, informing that, this Tuesday, close to 700 people are receiving care at the unit.

“We are setting up a field hospital here in Boa Vista to solve the problem of assistance to the indigenous people who are housed in the Casa de Apoyo and also to provide assistance to those who are arriving”, added Weibe Tapeba, reinforcing that the Ministry of Health plans to set up least one of these facilities in the Surucucu region, where the Yanomami live in a situation of great vulnerability.

According to secretary Weibe Tapeba, the main health problems identified are malnutrition, malaria and acute respiratory infection. This situation led the Ministry of Health to, last Friday (20th), declare a Public Health Emergency of National Importance – which allows the federal Executive Branch to adopt, as a matter of urgency, measures of “prevention, control and containment of risks, damages and harms to public health”.

The assembly of the Boa Vista Campaign Hospital is the responsibility of the Brazilian Air Force (FAB), under the coordination of the Ministries of Defense (MD) and Health (MS). The structure will house a multidisciplinary team, with military doctors from various specialties, as well as nurses, pharmacists and nursing technicians. X-ray and ultrasound equipment will be installed on site, next to a pharmacy and a laboratory capable of performing some laboratory tests.

The field hospital will also have inpatient beds for outpatients and stabilization of more serious patients who need to be transferred to more complex health units.