Give Medical Care to 3500 Venezuelan Indigenous

On this occasion, during the month of October 2022, a group of approximately 40 people, including medical specialists, bioanalysts and dentists, will serve 18 communities in the Manapiare Municipality and the Alto Ventuari sector in Amazonas State for 3 weeks. In this medical operation, all the epidemiological data and biological samples necessary to determine the health problems of 2,000 indigenous people will be collected and medicines will be given to treat the diagnosed diseases.

Within the great humanitarian crisis present in Venezuela, the most neglected populations are the indigenous communities with difficult access. The sanitary abandonment to which they are subjected seriously threatens their survival and, therefore, can lead to the disappearance of their biocultural heritage and their cosmology forever.

The Ubik – Manapiare project will be carried out in the Manapiare Municipality of Amazonas state and is intended to serve the population residing in the following communities: San Juan de Manapiare, Guara, Lajapelá, Ayacuchito, Fundo Mirabal, Fundo Viejo, Guayabalito, Yaviajé, Pozoterekay, Fundo Tito, Caño Araguato, Laguna Verde, Caño Maraca, Tacuahuaje, Macurojaca, Paraíso, Caño seje I, Caño seje II, Caraquita, Tucumasa and Fundo Azucena.

 All these communities add up to a total population of more than 3,900 inhabitants of different indigenous peoples (Huottöja, Jivi, Curripaco, Puinave, Hoti, are the majority). The health mission will be a resounding success if 50% of the population is served. That is, an approximate number of 2000 people.

Ubik means older brother in the Pemón language, the indigenous people that inhabit the municipality of La Gran Sabana in the Bolívar state of Venezuela. Under this name, Fundación Nativo carries out mobile health missions with medical specialists to serve indigenous populations that are difficult to access. Oddly enough, today, many of these people have never seen a medical specialist, and even less so if we are talking about being visited in their own community.

This year 2022, in the month of August, we will take more than 30 medical specialists, bioanalysts and dentists to 21 isolated communities of the Manapiare Municipality in the Amazonas State in Venezuela. We hope to serve more than 2,000 people who will be medically evaluated and medicines will be given to those who require treatment to cure their ailment.

 To achieve this goal, these medical specialists accustomed to treating their patients in an urban environment full of comforts, will travel by bus for 24 hours and then embark on a week-long journey by river to reach the indigenous communities that They have been waiting for them for a long time. They will sleep in hammocks, which will be protected from the rain only by palm leaf roofs that are already being built in the communities at the moment; their toilet will be the jungle itself, their shower the water of the Orinoco River, their food will be the same as the inhabitants of the area: fruit, vegetables, hunting and fishing.

They will have to protect themselves from the sun, mosquitoes, snake bites, malaria, spiders, piranhas, etc, etc.

Their alarm clock will be the howler monkeys at sunrise and their relaxant will be the sound of water and the stars at dusk and they will have no electricity, no social networks, no telephone,...

Although many people think so, these mobile health missions are not exotic vacations in a luxury resort. These are strenuous work days. Even so, we have to say that the medical personnel who do this intense work always return home with a smile on their face and a state of deep calm and serenity. And they are always ready to come back.

Our deepest thanks to the doctors who help us carry out our work and to all those who are reading these lines. Thanks to your immense support, you make it possible to bring a little hope to areas as distant and neglected as the indigenous communities.