Roraima, 20 March 2023 – In Roraima, northern Brazil, a medical automobile strikes down a bumpy highway, elevating a cloud of mud. It is among the Mobile Health Units of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) that helps carry medical help to Venezuelan indigenous individuals and their host communities in one among Brazil’s hardest-to-reach areas.

The state of Roraima is the principle gateway from Venezuela into Brazil for these leaving the nation’s ongoing financial and social disaster. Many of the greater than 400,000 Venezuelans who at the moment reside in Brazil entered the nation by way of the northern State.

“Many people can find a doctor close to where they live, but for thousands living in rural communities, health care is hours away,” says Maria Chan, IOM physician, on the finish of an extended day of consultations. To sort out this, IOM has determined to get medical workers on the transfer, travelling to the doorstep of these in want. “Indigenous people are among the most vulnerable populations. These services change the lives of people with chronic diseases in remote communities; it eases their lives.”

The cellular items are absolutely outfitted to supply Venezuelan migrants, together with refugees, and their host communities with much-needed well being care, together with important remedy and medicines as soon as a month. Two IOM Mobile Health Units are reaching the area’s most susceptible populations and coaching group well being brokers to supply major care to rural sufferers.

Indigenous communities within the area might undergo from a number of persistent ailments, reminiscent of hypertension and diabetes, kids’s malnutrition, fungal pores and skin infections, parasites, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

A well being initiative that saves lives

In a small room in an open college in Sakao Motá, an indigenous distant village internet hosting locals and Venezuelans, individuals wait within the sweltering warmth for the physician to name them for his or her medical analysis.

Katiuska Fernandez, 31, sits quietly together with her eight-year-old son. She is six months pregnant. “The nearest hospital is one hour away by car from here, and we have no money to pay for a taxi or other means of transportation,” she says as she waits for her common maternity test. “I am so glad everything is fine. This health care is changing our lives.”

In 2018, a scarcity of meals and medicines, plus rising insecurity pushed Katiuska and her five-member household to go away their small Venezuelan group throughout the border. They offered their belongings and crossed the boundary with a number of different Taurepang households. Since then, the subsistence farming practiced within the host group has helped them to outlive.

Last yr, the IOM well being workforce offered medical and psychological consultations to about 8,000 susceptible migrants, together with refugees, and host communities throughout Roraima, a mean of 30 individuals each day. Medical care included normal assessments, testing for STIs, COVID-19 and blood glucose, pediatric medication, and prenatal consultations.

Severely impacted by migration

Located within the São Marcos indigenous land – a tapestry of sun-scorched settlements house to the Tauperang individuals – Sakao Motá is among the indigenous communities severely impacted by the movement of migrants, together with refugees, from Venezuela, together with Ta’rau Parú, Par Bananal, and Sorocaima I communities, all positioned on the border between Brazil and Venezuela.

There are 160 Venezuelan indigenous individuals from the Taurepang group who at the moment reside in Sakao Motá. Before the arrival of Venezuelans, the village had solely 100 residents.

Despite the village farming sources being stretched, Venezuelans have been welcomed as a part of the identical indigenous group that shares linguistic origins and kinship ties.

Seated beneath a tamarind tree, Silvano Fernandez, a 55-year-old Brazilian indigenous man, remembers how his group opened its arms to Venezuelan brothers and sisters. “They are our relatives; we must welcome them because they are our people. Today it is them, but tomorrow it could be us.”

Silvano is among the medical unit’s common sufferers. He suffers from persistent pains attributable to a automobile accident, which impedes him from main a traditional life.

Even if Katiuska’s pregnancy-related well being outcomes have improved as she receives common checks from IOM’s physician, with no cellphone sign or entry to a automobile, she is able to ship at house when the time comes. “If I cannot get transportation to the nearest hospital, my baby will be born at home in the community like all my ancestors,” she mentioned after having acquired prenatal care.

This story was written by Gema Cortés, IOM Media and Communications Unit, Office of the Special Envoy for the Regional Response to the Venezuelan Situation.