"We did not know that COVID-19 existed": this remote village discovers the pandemic when health workers come to vaccinate them

By Reuters via

Mariano Quisto, the leader of a remote community living in the dense Amazon jungle, learned that there is a pandemic in the world just a few weeks ago, when a group of health workers arrived in his village with vaccines by boat.

"We did not know anything about COVID-19.

" Quisto acknowledged through a translator from Mangual, a village located in the vast but sparsely populated region of Loreto, in northern Peru.

Community leader Mariano Quisto receives the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

You will have to wait about four weeks for the second one.SEBASTIAN CASTANEDA / REUTERS

The Reuters news agency managed to reach the Urarina de Quisto indigenous community with health workers from the Peruvian Government and members of the International Red Cross, after

that leave from the Amazonian city of Iquitos, the largest metropolis. of the world that cannot be reached by road.

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In Mangual, the upstream town, the inhabitants hunt and fish for food and live in wooden houses on poles without electricity.

and the local language developed in isolation over centuries.

A group of health workers unload a refrigerator with vaccines against COVID-19 to be administered to the indigenous Uranina population, in the Amazon of Peru.SEBASTIAN CASTANEDA / REUTERS

"The brigades have not come here in many years.

" said Gilberto Inuma, president of Fepiurcha, an organization that defends the rights of the Urarina.

This indigenous group is made up of just 5,800 people, according to official data.

.

At least five people from the Uranus people have died from the coronavirus virus, Inuma said.

[The world exceeds 5 million deaths from COVID-19 in less than two years]

The trip upriver highlights

remote indigenous communities in Peru, as well as the gaps in access to healthcare.

The nurse Diego Sánchez prepares a vaccine against COVID-19 to be administered to an inhabitant of a remote village in the Peruvian Amazon.SEBASTIAN CASTANEDA / REUTERS

Many community members complained that what they really need is continuous better health services.

In the town without doctors, the most frequent ailments are headaches, diarrhea, malaria and conjunctivitis, Quisto said.

"

. That is our concern," he stressed.

Indigenous communities, especially in the Amazon, have one of the lowest vaccination rates in Peru, said Julio Mendigure, who directs health policy for remote communities at the country's Ministry of Health.

A group of indigenous Peruvians approach a boat loaded with COVID-19 vaccines.SEBASTIAN CASTANEDA / REUTERS

Less than 20% of them have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, compared to about half of the Peruvian population as a whole, he said.

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"When you look at that figure, you have to remember that to administer the two doses, the teams have to travel between four and five hours. That in the best of cases," explained Mendigure.

Getting to Mangual required

.

The ship carried a blue cooler with 800 doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine,

.

A team will return in November to administer the second doses.

The doctor Neuson Juran Apaza examines a girl during his visit to an isolated community in the Peruvian Amazon, where a group of health workers arrived to vaccinate its inhabitants against COVID-19.SEBASTIAN CASTANEDA / REUTERS

"I decided to get vaccinated so as not to get sick because it is possible that if the merchants come to visit they will bring the disease and transmit it," revealed a woman from Urarina, who spoke anonymously because the community speaks very little with outsiders.