Forgotten Amazon tribes fight against the virus
Deep in the Amazon, indigenous groups march proudly thundering the ground with their stomps, hand-in-hand, to stand against attacks on their people and tribal land.
They've experienced an attack on multiple fronts: first fires were lit to clear the land for cattle ranchers, illegal mining and Brazil's president has steamrolled his anti-environmental and indigenous policies into law.
Now the threat of the coronavirus brings the fear that death could strike these isolated tribes too.
Indigenous human rights defender Elcio Manchineri says the government isn't including indigenous people in their plan:
" There is no policy (health policy) by the states to combat this disease (COVID-19) within indigenous territories and when it exists (health policy), as is the case in Brazil, institutions refuse to provide this service."
Instead indigenous groups from nine countries in the Amazon basin rallied together on Wednesday (May 6) and called for donations to protect the 3 million people of the rainforest.
The virus has already infected nearly 200 of the 600 tribes. And over 30 people have been killed.
In Peru's province of Loreto that covers vast areas of the Amazon, hospitals are crammed with patients in corridors, outside and doctors are struggling to deliver essentials like oxygen.
"We are living in a terrible situation, a desperate situation, where we have to see people die everyday, where we cannot deliver the necessary supplies."
A fund has been established - aiming to raise $3 million in the next two weeks that will be managed by the NGO Rainforest Foundations US, that works to protect jungles.
The foundation's director Suzanne Pelletier: "This pandemic is not only a humanitarian emergency, it is also an environmental emergency. Indigenous people across the Amazon are the last line of defense against forest destruction and our best hope of mitigating climate change."
The Amazon populations severely lack access to healthcare, the funds will be wired directly to grantees' accounts.
The risk of ethnocide was raised on Sunday by dozens of international artists and scientists in a letter to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro urging him to protect Brazil's indigenous population.
