Scientists and the Government of Brazil disagree about whether the Amazon uncontacted tribes that came with the flu after making contact with the outside world last month received appropriate medical treatment. At least one scientist fears that the disease is just the beginning of a health disaster for the tribe and accuses the government of not taking fuller precautions before the tribespeople slipped into the forest.
According to new details disclosed by a senior official in the ministry of Brazil's Indian Affairs (FUNAI), the seven newly contacted tribes told an interpreter that they left their country of origin after coming under fire by non-Indians with guns. They first showed flu symptoms on 30 June, three days after their first meeting with government officials in the Brazilian village of Simpatia. The group then disappeared into the forest for 4 days.
vaccines against influenza When they finally reappeared in Simpatia 4 July, a government administered medical team. The officials then took the sick tribespeople at a remote border post and gave them six days of medical treatment. Finally, on July 11, they returned to their remote forest home, a village for up to 100 people.
After these medical interventions, those infected are safe for their isolated tribe. So wrote Carlos Travassos, Director of the General Coordination Unit FUNAI Loners and newly contacted Indians in July 22 email to Survival International, a nongovernmental organization based in London that supports tribal people.
But the anthropologist Kim Hill of Arizona State University, Tempe, said a health worker or an anthropologist would have been sent to people leaving for administering antibiotics for pneumonia likely and other secondary bacterial infections spread in the native village. Without properly administered antibiotics, Hill said, "third to half of the population will die" Based on the field work of his own and other anthropologists contacted with Amazon tribes, Hill said the flu victims are likely to infect. others in their tribe with foreign viruses, and other secondary bacterial infections take their toll on a population weakened. Travassos refused to talk to Science about it.
virologist Frederick Hayden of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville said that although he does not know the details of this case, it is generally believed that vaccines against the flu might do good. Although the plans are not effective treat the disease, they could protect the seven tribespeople of a future influenza exposure. Moreover, Hayden noted that early treatment of influenza antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu or Relenza, could "shorten the duration of illness and reduce the risk of infections of the lower respiratory tract. " Travassos, however, does not specifically mention such treatment in his email. According to Travassos, the FUNAI contact team gave hunters and gatherers from a primer in what influenza is, how it spreads, and what would happen if they did not return at the border the post Simpatia FUNAI or for medical treatment in case of new home. But Fiona Watson, research director for Survival International, said that the tribes may be too afraid to follow this advice. "Often, people associate tribal villages to host the infection," she said. "They think that the disease comes from there and they want to get out as soon as possible."
This reluctance to seek medical help outside may not bode well for those who acquire secondary respiratory infections, said Hill. in the mid 1980s, a group of tribespeople Yora who made contact with loggers in the region in the Amazon Peruvian were first infected with influenza and later came with pneumonia and other secondary infections. Without antibiotics, "the old people died and all the young children died," said Hill. A later study by medical anthropologist Glenn Shepard of Paraense Emilio Goeldi Museum in Belém, Brazil, found that nearly 300 people died, between 50% and 60% of the population.
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