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– We arrived in Peru in mid-July and were surprised to find that the infection had reached the most remote areas of the Amazon, says Nicholas Papachrysostomou. He is the emergency aid coordinator for MSF’s current aid operation in Peru, the country that currently has the highest death rate from covid-19 in the world.
– The spread of the infection was probably due to the fact that the people of the Amazon region had their jobs in Lima and other major cities. When these cities closed, they went home and took the infection, Papachrysostomou says by phone to Dagsavisen.
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Left alone
It is currently in the city of Santa María de Nieva, the capital of the Condorcanqui province of the Amazon. The small and dense local communities of the huge forest area are connected by an ingenious network of rivers and lakes, and many of the places can only be reached by boat.
Some of these places also closed when the pandemic hit, blocking rivers so people from outside wouldn’t bring the infection. Papachrysostomou talks about the hard work of transporting medicines, equipment and health personnel to small isolated communities.
Peru has experienced a harsh blockade and a state of national emergency, and in the first weeks of the shutdown, the indigenous people of the Amazon were almost forced to fend for themselves. They received little information about the virus, no infection control measures were introduced, and stocks of medicines ran out.
Many healthcare workers also became infected due to a lack of infection control equipment.
– One of our tasks has been to train local health workers on how to deal with this particular virus. People live together here and are not used to keeping their distance. The use of a mask is also very strange to them. We’ve also seen several have used traditional alternative medicine to ease symptoms, he says.
Some areas of Peru’s Amazon region are so inaccessible that MSF can only be reached by boat. Photo: Kuki Mendonça / MSF.
The wise man dies
As in the rest of the world, it is above all the ancients who die of crown in the Amazon. The elderly have a special and central position in many indigenous communities, and people feel that it is a great stress to lose the wisdom of life.
The crisis has also shown very clearly how underserved these communities are by the Peruvian authorities, according to Doctors Without Borders, which cooperates with several other international aid organizations in Peru.
– I think this area of the Amazon reached the peak of infection in June, because now the situation looks better here. However, we are trying to prepare for a further increase in infection, as we now see in Europe. The infection can return, and most likely it will return, Papachrysostomou fears.
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High mortality rate
The state of national emergency and the closure of the most affected areas of Peru recently extended until September. Peru is thus the country with the highest mortality rate at this time, with 86 deaths per crown per 100,000 inhabitants. In total, the country has 28,000 confirmed deaths from covid-19.
In Latin America, according to NTB, only Brazil has a higher number of infected than Peru, with its around 620,000 registered cases. The country’s borders remain closed and the authorities have also extended the night curfew.
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