Yanomami people
Ricardo Weibe Tapeba
, Secretary of Indigenous Health at the Ministry of Health
said this Tuesday (7) that the DSEIs
( Special Indigenous Health District
), including the Yanomami
, were “equipped” by politicians from Roraima. The statement was given at a press conference in Boa Vista.
Tapeba reported that the politicians responsible for equipping the DSEIs harmed the work of the sector’s teams. He even accused them of having connections with miners.
“What we experienced in the Yanomami DSEI in recent years was a true political apparatus, of true political oligarchies that hold power in Roraima. The difficulties that we identified in the management area are the result of this equipment”, declared the secretary.
Ricardo Weibe Tapeba, asked which people were involved in the rigging, said he could not give more details about the case, because the Federal Police was investigating.
Also during the press conference, the secretary said that he will need to install a second field hospital in the Yanomami region so that medical care can be provided to the indigenous people. The unit will mean that the group does not need to travel to Boa Vista, the state capital.
He also explained that there is an infrastructure plan to improve conditions in health facilities. “It will result in a water solution for the health units, electricity, internet and telephone and an improvement in physical conditions to reduce the turnover of professionals”, he detailed.
The Lula government has no information on how many miners escaped from the site.
The Minister of Defense, José Múcio, said that the federal government has not been monitoring how many miners have fled from Yanomami lands. He reported that the current concern is the humanitarian situation of the indigenous people.
Múcio will travel to the region to monitor the federal government’s assistance actions for indigenous people. Silvio Almeida, Minister of Human Rights, and Joenia Wapichana, president of Funai (National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples), will also be part of the trip.
Terra Yanomami is the largest indigenous reserve in Brazil. Currently, the site is experiencing a serious health crisis. There are dozens of cases of malaria and severe malnutrition. The situation got much worse during the Bolsonaro government, which did not create public policy to prevent the advance of illegal mining.
“Evidently we are, first, concerned with the humanitarian issue. Solving the issue of the Indians, of the disease, taking out the people inside who cannot leave. We have small planes providing this support there at the Surucucu airport, the runway it’s under construction, we can’t take bigger planes. So, you have to take groceries, take the sick, take people who are getting well. And everyone is involved in this to see if we turn that page”, said Múcio.
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