More than eight months after Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) authorized the vaccination of Covid in adolescents between 12 and 17 years old, indigenous young people from the villages of Vale do Javari, in western Amazonas, still have not received a single dose, according to reported to Repórter Brasil.
Vaccines have been stalled for four months in a cold chamber in Manaus, awaiting distribution by the Ministry of Health.
The application of the vaccine in this age group was authorized by Anvisa on June 11, exclusively for the Pfizer immunizer at that time, but it was only incorporated by the federal government into the vaccination plan three months later.
As a result, while adolescents from cities such as Manaus and São Paulo were vaccinated in August, indigenous people in this age group had to wait until October, when SESAI (Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health) began distributing doses.
The secretariat did not explain the reasons for this delay. Young people from the west of the Amazon, however, wait until today.
“The federal government said that assistance to indigenous people during the pandemic was a priority, but this is another lie, because in practice this has not been happening”, says Beto Marubo, representative of Unijava (União dos Povos Indígenas do Vale do Javari) in Brasilia.
An example of this is that doses of Pfizer for teenagers in Javari were sent to the Health Department of Amazonas, in Manaus, in early October, but so far they have not reached young people.
This is because the Dsei (District of Indigenous Health) Vale do Javari, an arm of the Ministry of Health, decided not to remove them from the capital, alleging a lack of aircraft to transport the doses to the villages, according to the city hall of Atalaia do Norte (AM). ).
When contacted, Sesai, responsible for indigenous health at the Ministry of Health, did not comment on the lack of aircraft and said that the delay was due to the “special conditions” of transport and storage of Pfizer’s vaccine in the region, where the villages are geographically dispersed.
“In the case of the Dsei Vale do Javari, which uses only air and river transport modes to reach indigenous communities, the logistical conditions collided with the specifics of the immunizer”, said Sesai, in a note sent to Repórter Brasil.
Despite the declaration, this immunizer can be transported and stored for up to 31 days under the same conditions as most vaccines applied in the SUS – that is, between 2ºC to 8ºC, equivalent to a common refrigerator –, according to the manufacturer.
To the report, Pfizer also stated that it worked with the Ministry of Health to guide health professionals regarding transportation and storage conditions.
According to Sesai, the vaccination of indigenous people living in the urban area of Atalaia do Norte would start on the 12th of this month – three days after being asked by Repórter Brasil about the delay. Vaccination for those who live in the villages would start on the 14th. However, local leaders denied it.
“Vaccination here in the municipality [para os adolescentes indígenas] started on friday [18]. Within the indigenous area, there is no forecast,” said Gilberto Marubo, a member of the Organization of Marubo Villages on the Ituí River, who is in Atalaia.
Sesai was asked about the new delay and a forecast of a new date for vaccination within the indigenous land, but did not respond.
There are 913 young people aged between 12 and 17 in Vale do Javari, according to the secretariat. The immunization coordinator of Atalaia do Norte, Gercilene Alves, confirmed that the indigenous adolescents in the villages have not yet been vaccinated.
While these adolescents remain unprotected, the more than 900 doses of Pfizer aimed at them have been stored since October in the cold chamber of the Amazonas state health department in Manaus, more than 1,100 km from Atalaia.
After 8 months without a distribution plan, Sesai has now informed that it will use doses of Coronavac in the region, “given its greater validity and ease of handling and transport”.
Manufactured by the Butantan Institute, the vaccine can stay up to 12 months in the range between + 2ºC and + 8ºC. The application of Coronavac in the public from 6 to 17 years old was authorized by Anvisa on January 20th.
The neglect also spills over into the vaccination of 1,293 children aged 5 to 11 in the region – most of them living in the villages. According to the immunization coordinator of Atalaia do Norte, pediatric doses of Pfizer for children in villages are already available to Dsei in the municipality.
This type of dose can be kept in a regular freezer for up to ten weeks, unlike the vaccine for adolescents and adults, whose recommendation is 31 days. Even with this longer term facility, the vaccination of children also did not start in Javari.
Repórter Brasil tried to contact the coordinator of the Dsei Vale do Javari, Jorge Oliveira Duarte, by telephone and messages, to comment on the lack of aircraft and the delay in vaccination, but received no response.
slow vaccination
Although they are part of Covid’s priority vaccination group, vaccination of indigenous people is moving more slowly than in the rest of the country, as shown by Repórter Brasil in December.
Indigenous leaders from Vale do Javari –a region with more than 26 indigenous peoples and home to the largest number of isolated people in the world– also denounce the slowness in the application of the third dose among adults and the elderly.
According to the latest Sesai bulletin, of the 3,139 indigenous people over 18 years of age, only 692 (22%) received the booster dose by February 5th.
“We are waiting for the third dose. We know that the vaccine has arrived [à sede do município] a long time ago, at the beginning of the year, but the third dose has not yet been made in the villages”, says Paulo Marubo, coordinator of Unijava.
In the last four months, three elders have died after contracting the disease, according to the indigenous people. “We had 15 elders in Maronal village [do povo Marubo]and now there are 12. It is a small community, they are in a state of commotion”, says Êpatxô Manoel Chorimpa, president of the Marubo people’s association on the upper Curuçá River.
“An old man is a library that is gone. For us these deaths are a tremendous loss as a Marubo people, whose education is based on ancestral knowledge”, says Beto Marubo, from Unijava in Brasília. “Our concern is that young people get sick as well as old people.”
In the Dsei Yanomami, in Roraima, vaccination is also slow. Only 8 of the 5,519 young people between 12 and 17 years old (0.15%) received the first two doses. Considering all 112,000 indigenous adolescents living in the country, 70% have already received the first dose and 25% the second.
The data contrasts with the rest of the country, where 77% of this population is on the first dose and 50%, on the two, according to the ministry. The ministry did not comment on the delays in the application of the second and third doses by the indigenous people.
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