Coronavirus: Contaminated Indians In Ecuador Call For State Action

Indigenous leaders Waorani Nemonte Nenquimo and Gilberto Nenquimo brief their community on the Covid-19 pandemic in Tadangado on April 24, 2020. Mitch Anderson / Amazon Frontlines / AFP

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In Ecuador, the Waorani are the last indigenous people to have accepted contact with Western civilization. There are still 5,000 living in three Amazon provinces, but despite the isolation of their community, the Covid-19 pandemic has not spared them. They this week demanded official protective measures and complain about Quito's inaction.

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With our correspondent in Quito, Eric Samson

Indigenous officials speak of 73 cases of Covid-19 confirmed in several of their ancestral communities. The president of the Waorani nation , Gilberto Nenquimo, denounced the state's slowness in the face of the progression of the pandemic: “  28 days ago, I gave the alert to all the health centers. I am not a doctor but the symptoms of our patients were those of Covid-19. But nobody listened to me.  "

According to Nenquimo, a 21-year-old young Waorani who tested positive for Covid-19 would have had to be rushed to Quito on Saturday May 17 for her relatives to be tested in the Miwaguno community. He now wants the state to act urgently to protect the other Waorani centers.

Risk of spread increases

“  I asked the state to ban entry into the Waorani territories, to block the timber traffickers, many of whom come from Guayaquil, the epicenter of the pandemic . But nobody did anything, indignant Gilberto Nenquimo . There was a meeting a week ago, but since then, health personnel have still not been able to test the population of communities where there are suspicious cases, not even those accessible by road !  "

According to Andrès Tapia, leader of the Confederation of Indigenous Nations of the Ecuadorian Amazon, eight natives died from Covid-19, including five confirmed positive and three likely. And the risk of progression of the pandemic increases with the progressive lifting of the quarantine in several Amazonian municipalities.

► Also read: Coronavirus in the United States: Navajo Indians, second most affected population

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  • Ecuador
  • Coronavirus
  • Health and Medicine

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