The story behind the image of an indigenous person carrying his father to get vaccinated against Covid

A photograph of an indigenous man carrying his father on his back to take the Covid-19 vaccine has caught the attention of thousands of people in recent days on social media.

The image shows Tawy Zó’é, 24, struggling to carry Wahu Zó’é, 67. The young man walked through the forest for hours, on a path with hills, streams and other obstacles until he reached the team’s base. health in the region.

The scene moved the doctor Erik Jennings Simões, who recorded the moment in a photograph. For the health professional, the commitment of the young indigenous person to immunize his father was one of the most remarkable moments he witnessed in 2021.

The record was made in January 2021, at the beginning of vaccination against Covid-19 in the country. However, it was only shared by the doctor on social media last week, almost a year later.

“I wanted to send a positive message at the beginning of the year”, says the doctor to BBC News Brasil.

“It was also a way of trying to send a message from the Zo’é people, because they always ask if white people are getting vaccinated and if Covid-19 is over,” adds Erik.

The Zo’é indigenous people live on about 669,000 hectares in northern Pará, near the Amazon River, in an area of ​​forest considered highly preserved and with enormous biodiversity.

According to health agents working in the region, the Zo’é population is currently made up of about 325 indigenous people, who live scattered throughout the territory, living in more than 50 villages. Throughout the year, they often move to different locations in the area where they live.

They are considered a people with recent external contact, normally only through the Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health (Sesai) or the National Indian Foundation (Funai).

Since the beginning of the pandemic, according to official data, the people have not registered any case of Covid-19.

It is a different reality from the general context of the pandemic among indigenous people across the country.

According to the most recent data from Sesai, since March 2020 there have been 57,100 cases of Covid-19 among indigenous people in Brazil and 853 deaths from the disease.

Indigenous entities, on the other hand, point out that Sesai’s data are limited as they only include indigenous villagers. The Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) carried out its own survey on the subject and pointed out that the country reached the mark of a thousand indigenous people killed by the disease caused by the new coronavirus in March 2021.

Tactics to face the pandemic

Erik, 52, has been the doctor in charge of the Zo’é people for nearly two decades. He and a team of nursing technicians, nurses and dentists, who arrive at the site in an airplane and provide care at a base created within the area of ​​these indigenous people.

At the beginning of the pandemic, according to the doctor, the Zo’é people created a strategy to prevent Covid-19 from spreading in their area.

“They were divided into groups of approximately 18 families, isolated in the most distant villages and avoided any type of contact with the health team”, explains the doctor.

“They adopted a strategy of not crossing paths between them and avoided approximation with whites. It is an ancient tactic to avoid a pandemic, decided and initiated by themselves”, he adds.

According to him, there are numerous paths throughout the forest area and only the indigenous people know how to walk and prevent the groups from crossing each other.

When vaccination against Covid-19 began in the country, indigenous people were considered priority groups. For the health team accompanying the Zo’é people, a challenge arose: how to immunize this population, reducing the chance of infection by the coronavirus as much as possible.

Even with the team members testing negative for Covid-19, using the appropriate and partially vaccinated Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), the health professionals decided to discuss with the indigenous people the safest way to apply the immunizer.

A technical evaluation pointed out that it would be unfeasible for the health team to go to each village to apply the first dose. This is because they analyzed that it would take weeks to vaccinate everyone, due to the displacement in the region.

“In addition, we would have to walk with heavy PPE in the forest and we would need the company of the Zo’é people to guide. This would increase contact with the indigenous people and the possibility of contamination, precisely what they were avoiding”, says the doctor.

The team would also need to sleep in the villages, due to the long distance in the region, increasing the risks of possible contamination by Covid-19.

It was decided that the team would use three huts close to the health base, in open and airy places. No indigenous slept on site and each family was vaccinated separately.

Upon arrival at the immunization site, each indigenous person was responsible for walking through the forest to avoid encountering other groups of the people.

On January 22, 2021, it was Wahu and Tawy’s turn to receive the first dose of the vaccine. According to the doctor, father and son have always had an intense relationship of affection and respect. A common action of young people, even before the pandemic, was to carry their father in a kind of Jamanxim, a form of backpack or basket made by indigenous people.

“The father (Wahu) had poor eyesight, could hardly see anything anymore, and also had a serious chronic problem with his urinary tract. As a result, he was almost completely unable to walk in the forest”, says Erik. “So, what would work there would be to carry the parents on the back. That’s what works in the forest, because there’s no ambulance or other form of transport”, he adds.

The arrival of the son carrying his father on his back touched Erik and the other health professionals. “It was a very beautiful scene, of the love relationship between them”, says the doctor. Erik estimates that it took a father and son five to six hours through the forest to reach the immunization site.

Shortly after being vaccinated, Tawy put her father back on her back and headed towards the forest. He said he couldn’t take long, as he had to reach the village before dark.

As father and son left the health care base, Erik took the picture. “I wanted to register because it was a very beautiful scene and because it demonstrates the concern to vaccinate. In addition, the image illustrates the strategy adopted by articulating the population’s knowledge with ours, in search of the result of avoiding Covid in the Zo’é people”, he says. the doctor.

The publication of the image

At first, Erik says he didn’t think about sharing Wahu and Tawy’s image on social media. However, he thought it could be an important message and also show the concern of indigenous people about vaccination.

Erik, who has more than 18,000 followers on Instagram, shared the photograph on January 1. The record was soon shared by countless people or pages on different social networks and garnered thousands of likes.

The doctor, who usually shares content about indigenous health on social media, was surprised by the repercussions. “I didn’t imagine that this image would have so much scope”, he confesses.

Along with the messages from people admiring the scene, there were also criticisms. “They wanted to know why we didn’t vaccinate the indigenous people directly in the villages where they are”, says the doctor, who soon explains the situation.

“In the face of the pandemic, as in other health situations, we have adopted practices that respect and take into account the culture and knowledge of the Zo’é people in the care of their own health.”

“We avoid, at all costs, the imposition of our biomedical model that often causes serious side effects, both physical, psychological and cultural”, adds the doctor.

He points out that using a car, ambulance or even a helicopter would not be possible in the middle of the forest where the people live. “We’ve even tried before, but the helicopters don’t land in the villages. And the planes can only land at the health base, which is where the landing strip is”, he details.

The doctor emphasizes that the entire vaccination campaign, from the first dose to the third, was carried out in the same way, as they had agreed since January 2021 with indigenous peoples through a radio used as communication between the medical team and the Zo’é people. .

Despite some criticism, the doctor classifies the repercussion of the photo as extremely positive. He claims he managed to get a message across in favor of vaccination.

“Indigenous people do not understand why many whites have not been vaccinated. They are concerned about this because they know that if whites do not take care of themselves, it also reflects on them.”

And the image also immortalized the love between father and son. Wahu died in September, probably as a result of chronic urinary problems that worsened in the last few years of his life. Tawy continues with her family in the village and recently took her third dose against Covid-19.