I’m Raquel Simakawa, an infectiologist pediatrician for Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), and I was in the Yanomami Indigenous Territory at the start of MSF’s operations at the end of May, in partnership with SESAI (Secretary of Indigenous Health) at the Ministry of Health, focusing on diagnosing and treating in the fight against malaria.

Malaria is an infectious disease caused by a parasite, transmitted by mosquitoes. So to properly control the disease and to keep the case numbers low, it’s important that you detect it early and start treatment as soon as possible and that you take vector control measures, which keep disease spreading mosquito numbers down.

The strategy adopted together with the Special Indigenous Health District (DSEI) and the Ministry of Health for the Auaris region is active search, which consists of carrying out tests for malaria on the highest number of people possible in the community. The tests are repeated weekly. After a decline in case numbers is detected, the frequency of the tests is amended according to the situation.

The MSF team that is working in Auaris is made up of doctors, a team of nurses, an anthropologist, someone responsible for logistics and a cultural mediator, who is a person from the community that supports our work across the region.

A big focus of our organization is to work collaboratively, alongside the community. And this happens with the indigenous leaders, with the people from the community and also working collaboratively with the indigenous health worker from DSEI.

This process of community engagement, at the moment, has been happening through listening to the leaders and key figures in the community to understand what they see as their requests and needs, and from there, creating strategies that best fit their needs. So these strategies contain conversations about malaria, about how it spreads, prevention methods, the importance of following the treatment to its final day. And these strategies created collaboratively are important so that what we do is respectful, caring and fits with the reality of these communities.

As well as the Yanomami territory, since February, an MSF team has been working to provide health care to indigenous people at the Yanomami Indigenous Health Centre (CASAI-Y), located in Boa Vista.