[News]Indigenous people fear the COVID-19 vaccine in Brazil

[SougarLord]

Wearing traditional clothing from her tribe, Vanda Ortega receives the COVID-19 vaccine in Manaus, Brazil, on January 18, 2021.
 
Ortega is the first Witoto indigenous woman to be vaccinated against the virus in a region where many people do not trust the vaccine. (AP Photo / Edmar Barros, File) © Provided by Associated Press Wearing traditional tribal clothing, Vanda Ortega receives the COVID-19 vaccine in Manaus, Brazil, on January 18, 2021. Ortega is the first indigenous Witoto to got vaccinated against the virus in a region where many people do not trust the vaccine. (AP Photo / Edmar Barros, File)
MANAUS, Brazil (AP) - Navigating a complex river network to reach remote communities in the Brazilian Amazon is just the first challenge that nurse Waldir Pires da Luz Bittencourt faces to vaccinate indigenous and riverine inhabitants against COVID-19. Upon arriving, he stumbles upon something he did not expect: the fear of the vaccine.

"It is a new phenomenon among indigenous peoples, derived from the politicization of the issue of vaccines," said Bittencourt, 32, who throughout the eight years he has been in the profession has been involved in campaigns against tuberculosis, diphtheria and tetanus.

Medical personnel like Bittencourt are being sent to isolated corners of Brazil, often traveling for hours in small planes or boats. Most jungle communities have basic sanitary facilities that are unable to treat COVID-19 patients. For this reason, vaccines are essential to contain the outbreak.

 

 

Brazil has more than 235,000 deaths and is surpassed only by the United States in that line, according to the Johns Hopkins University account. In a query last month from pollster Datafolha, 17% of respondents said they did not plan to get vaccinated. The percentages are highest in the North and Midwest, which Datafolha groups into one category, and lowest in the South and Southeast, higher-income regions.

 

 

Health personnel, experts and anthropologists say that the rejection or fear of the vaccine responds in part to the doubts that President Jair Bolsonaro generates regarding the efficacy of the vaccine. Bolsonaro, who was infected last year and recovered, says he does not plan to get vaccinated and insists that no one should do it if he does not want it.

He initially refused to authorize the purchase of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine and said on Facebook that Brazil would never be “anyone's guinea pig”. He also rejected the Pfizer vaccine, citing a clause that exempts the US firm from potential liability. He joked that no one could be claimed if women grew beards, men's voices changed, or people turned into alligators.

 

 

His preaching against science reached the riverside towns and indigenous communities of the Amazon.

 

“This movement against the vaccine was not born there. Some missionaries bring it, social networks and fake news, ”said anthropologist Aparecida Maria Neiva Vilaça, who has worked with indigenous communities in the northern state of Rondonia.

 

Indigenous communities have gained greater access to technology and the internet in recent years, but the information often arrives "very distorted," Bittencourt said in a telephone interview from Macapa, capital of the state of Amazonas.

There is also little diversity in information.

 

In the Pururé community in the Tumucumaque Mountains National Park, a group asked Bittencourt if they could inject him with the vaccine imported from India because they thought it had been produced by indigenous peoples. In Brazil the word "Indian" is still used to refer to the indigenous.

 

In other villages, some feared being used to test vaccines. Others were concerned about the possibility of the devil being put into their bodies.

 

While most people ended up being convinced to get the vaccine, both Bittencourt and Vilaça said they did not see as much reluctance from indigenous peoples in the past.

 

Some evangelical leaders have spread misinformation, they noted. Evangelicals mostly supported Bolsonaro in the 2018 presidential campaign, and various pastors from remote communities helped spread his message against COVID-19 vaccines.

 

Messages circulated widely on WhatsApp that many pastors said they could cure infected people. “Tell your family members that they do not need to take the vaccine. I am God, I am the cure, ”they told an individual, according to her. Another individual repeated the falsehood that the vaccine would increase a person's chances of getting the virus.

"It's going to alter your DNA" and increase the chances of infecting you, another pointed out.

 

Vilaça, who teaches at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro when she is not in the north, said the same thing happens with the rest of Brazilian society.

 

"A large percentage of the information is transmitted through WhatsApp, social networks and many people do not have access to newspapers," she said.

 

Nurse Luciana Dias da Costa also had difficulties vaccinating in Amazonas, where a new outbreak of the virus overwhelmed the health system in the capital, Manaus. A nationwide campaign emerged to deliver oxygen to patients who cannot breathe.

 

"We want to vaccinate everyone, but some are left, others not," said da Costa, 46, during an interview while traveling by boat to Sao Joao do Tupe, 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of Manaus. There, many elders told him that they feared the side effects of the vaccine.

 

Official government figures indicate that the death rate in the state of Amazonas is 224 per 100,000 inhabitants, double that of the rest of the country. Some experts believe that a new variant of the coronavirus that is more contagious and resistant to treatment has caused a sharp increase in the number of hospitalizations and deaths.

 

Dr. Ethel Maciel, who advised the government when it formulated its vaccination program, said that remote communities in the Amazon are a priority given the lack of infrastructure and the great distances that people must travel to seek medical attention in Manaus, which already it is already overwhelmed.

 

"When there are serious infectious diseases such as COVID-19, which tends to progress rapidly, people sometimes die on the way, without reaching" to the capital, she said Maciel.

 

In Amazonas, Jane Barbosa de Albuquerque, 71, says she was initially skeptical. “We had doubts. Which vaccine is the best? What do I get? Which one will arrive in Amazonas? There were so many controversies ... ”, she commented.

 

Ultimately, however, she overcame her fears and agreed to get vaccinated, saying that "health comes first."