"We did not know that COVID-19 exists," say Amazon tribes in Peru as vaccine arrives

Record ID: 1644387

  • Title: "We did not know that COVID-19 exists," say Amazon tribes in Peru as vaccine arrives
  • Date: 1st November 2021
  • Summary: LORETO, PERU (RECENT - OCTOBER 9, 2021) (REUTERS) GENERAL VIEW OF BOAT ON CHAMBIRA RIVER HEADING TO INDIGENOUS TOWNS IN AMAZON INTERIOR OF BOAT ON CHAMBIRA RIVER MANGUAL, LORETO, PERU (RECENT - OCTOBER 11, 2021) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF CANOES ON RIVER VARIOUS OF RED CROSS MEMBERS ARRIVING AT REMOTE INDIGENOUS VILLAGE GENERAL VIEW OF RED CROSS MEMBERS TALKING TO INDIGENOUS COM
  • Embargoed: 15th November 2021 21:25
  • Keywords: Amazon COVID-19 Peru coronavirus indigneous community pandemic vaccines
  • Location: LORETO + MANGUAL, LORETO + SANTA HERMOSA, LORETO, PERU
  • City: LORETO + MANGUAL, LORETO + SANTA HERMOSA, LORETO, PERU
  • Country: Peru
  • Topics: Health/Medicine,South America / Central America
  • Reuters ID: LVA001F1WMQMF
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Apu Mariano Quisto, the leader of a remote community in Peru's dense Amazon rainforest, says the first he heard about the global COVID-19 pandemic was when health workers arrived by boat to his isolated village with vaccines in October.
    "We did not know that COVID-19 exists. That it is a virus. It is the first time that we have heard about a virus called COVID-19. Thank you for this information," Quisto told a Reuters reporter through a translator from the village of Mangual, in Peru's vast but sparsely populated Loreto region in the country's north.
    Reuters traveled with government health workers to Quisto's Urarina indigenous community, reached by a three-day boat ride along rivers starting from the Amazonian city of Iquitos, the world's largest metropolis that cannot be reached by car.
    Mangual is the village highest up the river.
    Residents have no electricity in their wooden stilt houses, living from hunting and fishing.
    Connection with the outside world is minimal and the local language developed over centuries in isolation.
    The broader Urarina indigenous group, one of Peru's most insular, numbers just 5,800 people, official data show.
    Not all communities have been spared from the knowledge - or impact - of the pandemic.
    Locals report at least five have died of COVID-19.
    The trip upriver, with health officials and members of the International Red Cross, underscores the challenges of vaccinating remote indigenous communities in Peru and beyond, as well as gaps in wider healthcare access for remote groups.
    Many people in the communities complained that what they really needed was better continuous healthcare services.
    "We have people who are sick with headaches, vomiting, diarrhea and malaria, because malaria exists here in the community and there are no medicines to treat the patients," Quisto said, adding conjunctivitis to the list.
    The village has no doctors within the community.
    Less than 20% of Peru's indigenous population has been fully vaccinated, compared to around 50% for the country as a whole, he said.
    Reaching Mangual required 26 hours of travel spread over three days along rivers that at times dry up or are blocked with fallen trees.
    The boat included a blue cooler box carrying 800 doses of China's Sinopharm vaccine, kept refrigerated using dry ice.
    A team will go back in November to give second doses after administering over 600 inoculations.
    (Production: Sebastian Castaneda, Carlos Valdez, Paul Vieira, Eva Weininger)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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