Yanomami report dozens dead in epidemic

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Yanomami Indians in the Venezuelan Amazon say that dozens of their people have died in an epidemic of disease, which may be malaria.

‘There are still many, many sick people,’ Yanomami health worker Andres Blanco told the Associated Press (AP) on Friday.

Blanco had trekked for days to reach the affected area. He told AP that when he arrived in mid-October, Yanomami leaders had told him that 51 people had died in three villages whose total population was only around 200. The total number of deaths is unclear.

‘I’ve never seen it like this,’ said Shatiwe Luis Ahiwei, another Yanomami health worker quoted by AP.

The Yanomami are the largest relatively isolated tribe in the Amazon rainforest , with a population of about 32,000 straddling the Venezuela-Brazil border. Due to their isolation they have very little resistance to introduced diseases.

In the 1980s and 1990s when goldminers invaded their land, one fifth of the Yanomami in Brazil died from diseases such as flu and malaria introduced by the miners. Their future was only secured after a major international campaign led by the Yanomami themselves, Survival and the Pro Yanomami Commission.

Health care remains precarious on both the Venezuelan and Brazilian sides of the border.