Following reports of children dying from malnutrition and other illnesses brought on by illegal gold mining, Brazil’s ministry of health has declared a medical emergency in the Yanomami territory, the largest indigenous reservation in the country and a bordering region with Venezuela.
The goal of the declaration, according to a decree issued on Friday by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s new administration, is to rebuild health services for the Yanomami people that were destroyed by his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.
According to data obtained through a FOIA request and reported by the Amazon journalism platform Sumauma, 570 Yanomami children died during the first four years of Bolsonaro’s presidency from treatable diseases, primarily malnutrition but also malaria, diarrhoea, and malformations brought on by mercury used by illegal gold miners.
Lula visited a Yanomami health facility in Boa Vista, Roraima state, on Saturday after images of children and elderly people who were so thin their ribs could be seen were published.
Lula wrote on Twitter that what he witnessed in Roraima was ‘more than a humanitarian crisis; what I saw there was genocide: a premeditated crime against the Yanomami, committed by a government insensitive to suffering.’
In a region of rainforest and tropical savanna the size of Portugal, where 26,000 Yanomami people reside, the government announced food packages that will be flown to the reservation.
Since Bolsonaro took office in 2018, the number of incursions into the reservation has increased. Bolsonaro campaigned on a platform of opening up previously protected lands to mining and promising to legalise wildcat mining.
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