11. The health issue

Behind the photos of landscapes, rivers and exuberant nature there is another, less attractive, reality. The Amazon forest is one of the unhealthiest places for human beings. Within it can be found malaria, parasites, chronic anaemias, leishmaniosis (a subtropical sand-fly disease), erysipelas (an acute skin infection), measles, diarrhoeas, hepatitis, and the worst local illness: a variant called black fever or Purus hepatitis.

Not only microscopic beings cause problems. One of the first difficulties for the religious was against the vicious ants, or “cutters”. To get an idea of the size of the nests, after been fumigated with sulphur and arsenic the area where there were collapsed half a meter.

In 1966 there was a special outbreak of malaria, but what most intrigued them in the medical investigation was the local “Labrea hepatitis”, that is the “hepatitis of the Purus” or the “black fever”. The Biochemist Jorge Boshell lived together with the religious for months studying it.

Since 1968 there was a Campaign for the Eradication of Malaria; on more than one occasion public force was necessary in order to fumigate. In fact, Brazil continued to use DDT even when it had been prohibited in most countries for its toxicity and there were social protests because of its use.

Sanitary attention took decades to be realized by professionals. The profession of doctors and nurses was done by Mayors, volunteers or functionaries without training, as well as religious. The first doctor who came to Tapaua was only there for two months in 1969. In 1973 they opened a hospital; the direction was undertaken by the Augustinian Recollect Saturnino Fernandez.

In 1977 they managed to get a pharmacist to reside in Tapaua, and they named him as Director of the hospital. The Marists organized medical missions in agreement with volunteers from the Catholic University of Paraná. In the winter of 1978-1979 measles caused more than thirty deaths.

In 1982 a married couple of a surgeon and a paediatrician arrived, who stayed for six years. In 1991 they recovered the presence of two doctors, although there was little preventative healthcare and the rural population continued to be completely abandoned. “The main sickness is hunger”, the new doctors mentioned to the religious’ . One of the most important means of prevention was without a solution in the middle of the 90’s: water.

For decades’ water was collected directly from the river, with what that can mean for healthiness and hygiene. Later there was only one well for the 7,516 inhabitants registered in the rural zone. The Augustinian Recollects were pioneers in the sinking of wells, and a network of drinkable water. In 1995 they opened three wells, with help from the Catholic Scottish organization SCIAF.

The rural zone has medical attention only through the actions of the Navy, who have a medical boat based in Belém do Pará. The Prelature of Labrea, thanks to various social projects, obtained a boat, (Black Lagoon) with professional volunteers. In 2015 it passed through the rural communities of Tapaua.

NEXT PAGE: 12. Charity from outside

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