Indigenous Children Die of Dehydration, Kidney Failure and Pneumonia in Brazil

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Dehydration, kidney failure and pneumonia have killed six Indian children over the past two weeks in central Brazil, health authorities said Thursday.

SAO PAULO, Brazil — Dehydration, kidney failure and pneumonia have killed six Indian children over the past two weeks in central Brazil, health authorities said Thursday, a day after authorities warned of a separate rise in malaria among other groups.


The children, all 5 or under, were members of the 1,300-person Apinaje tribe about 1,900 kilometers(1,180 miles) north of Sao Paulo.


"Four of the children died of severe dehydration following violent diarrhea and vomiting bouts," Rodrigo Oliveira, the spokesman for the Health Ministry's National Health Foundation said by telephone. "The other two died of kidney failure and pneumonia."


Four children other children with similar symptoms were hospitalized and 30 others were under medical observation, he said.


Oliveira said there is "strong suspicion" that the children had drunk contaminated water from streams that cross the reservation or from village wells.


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"The water is being analyzed and we have sent several water trucks into the reservation with clean, safe-to-drink water," he said.


The government's census bureau said in December that the infant mortality rate among Indians was sharply higher than among the general population. About 51 of every 1,000 Indian newborns die in their first year of life, compared with 30 per 1,000 for the general population.


The report came a day after an Indian rights group, the Pro Yanomami Commission, reported "a malaria epidemic" among Brazil's Yanomami Indians, with 1,400 cases reported last year in a population of only 15,000.


Doctors once believed the disease was being eradicated among the Yanomami, one of the most isolated Indian peoples in the world.


"What is very alarming is that if it gets completely out of control, we will have a repeat scenario of what happened some years ago, where over a seven-year period, 20 percent of the population died," said Fiona Watson, a coordinator with the London-based group Survival International.


Diseases such as malaria and the flu are most often spread by miners, who have repeatedly invaded the Yanomami reservation in search of precious metals.


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Associated Press Writer Michael Astor in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this report.


Source: Associated Press


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