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Vanuzia Costa Santos, the first indigenous woman to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in Brazil, aged 50, lives in the multi-ethnic town Filhos de Terra, located in the Cabuçu neighborhood of Guarulhos.
Nursing technician and social worker, Vanuzia is also president of the Popular Council Kaimbé, native to the northeast. He says he wants to come back one day to take care of the villagers of Massacara, in the city of Euclides da Cunha, Bahia, where he was born.
Today, Massacará has around 200 families, around 180 families from this town reside in São Paulo. Vanuzia came Live not been in 1988 to work.
‘I am a defender of life’
“I was very happy to participate at this time. I am a defender of life, other vaccines, prevention, health. We must value education, science, and this can be reconciled by maintaining a belief, with prayer and the traditional medicine of my people. “, it states
He says that it is necessary to educate other indigenous families about the importance of immunization. As a nursing technician, Vanuzia worked at Casa do Índio, where she worked for 10 years.
Vanuzia was diagnosed with Covid-19 in early May. Single, with a 24-year-old son, she recounts the suffering caused by the disease: bodily pain, cough, great difficulty in breathing, in addition to the lack of smell and taste that persists today.
“I did not go to the hospital because I helped take care of six other people, I needed to have the strength to give a word of comfort and take care of them, without overwhelming myself. I had an oximeter but I couldn’t measure my breathing so as not to scare me. I did the test on June 15 and I was cured, “he said.
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