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Peru's Amazon Tribe Close to Extinction from Hepatitis B Infection
"My people are suffering, we're in real danger of extinction," said Candoshi chief, or Apu, Venancio Ucama Simon.
Standing next to a Candoshi woman who doctors said only had two years left to live thanks to hepatitis-induced cirrhosis, Ucama called on the government to declare a health emergency in his region.
Speaking through an interpreter in Lima, Ucama accused Peru's health authorities of decades of inattention, letting hepatitis B and other diseases run unchecked, threatening to wipe out not only the Candoshi but other indigenous groups, including the Shapra, Awajun, Achuar and Huambisa.
All the ethnic groups live in Peru's remote Datem del Maranon province, in the country's north.
Shortly after Ucama's appeal, Health Minister Oscar Ugarte held a press conference to declare a health emergency in the area to tackle the hepatitis B epidemic.
"We will guarantee permanent human and economic resources to launch a massive inoculation drive against that disease," he told reporters.
Gianina Lucana, a Candoshi nurse working for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), said at Ucama's press conference that "so far, 80 people have died from hepatitis B since 2000" in her region.
She said the disease broke out in the 1990s, when Occidental Petroleum Corporation was granted exploration rights in her jungle region.
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