Government officials are currently engaged in the processes for the distribution of the coronavirus relief cash-grants, with priority being given to the most afflicted, most vulnerable hinterland communities, simultaneous to medical interventions intended to halt and even reverse the spread of the deadly pandemic.
However, indigenous people from other parts of the world are not that fortunate; Brazil’s First Peoples included.

Avaaz is a community petitions platform that is supporting thousands to start and win campaigns at the local, national, and international levels. It is a U.S.-based nonprofit organisation launched in January 2007 by founder and CEO, Ricken Patel. The organisation addresses issues such as animal welfare, the environment, human rights, social justice, and local and community issues among others.

Oscar Soria, an official of Avaaz, dispatched to international supporters a letter that describes, in excruciating detail, the toll the COVID-19 pandemic is taking on indigenous tribes in the Amazon Basin, primarily in Brazil.

“…The crisis facing the Amazon is huge… I made the first call, and cried. Then I made a hundred more — talking to Amazon chiefs and elders throughout the rainforest.
“The voices changed, but it was all one story: of Earth’s most resilient people, passionate guardians of the forest, facing utter devastation by COVID-19. It’s killing their elders, their children, mothers, and warriors.

“One man was days from any hospital, and his wife was sick. The next time we spoke, she was dead. And yet he couldn’t stop to grieve. Too many of his people still needed help.
“The scale of the suffering nearly broke me — the Waorani, the Yanesha, the Kayapó, and dozens more — they’ve given all they can to protect their families and the rainforest.
“Over thousands of years, tribal elders have grown a deep, intimate wisdom of the rainforest, and how we can help it to heal. But now that ancient human library is being ravaged by the virus, just at the moment the world needs it most.

“More than 150 tribes in Brazil are already infected, and people are dying at double the rate of the general population. I know how desperate it is. They told me through tears.
“We’ve just helped over 35,000 indigenous families across the Amazon, but we have to do more… If we raise enough (funds), we can: Provide vital COVID-19 testing kits, medical supplies, and food packages for desperate families; fund mobile health facilities and makeshift ICU beds in remote areas, and rebuild rundown health centres; buy vital communication equipment so communities can coordinate evacuations, report infections, and call for help.

This is our chance to defend the defenders; to lift up the people who’ve cared for and protected the world’s most precious rainforest for millenia… Let’s do all we can to lift up the guardians of Earth’s most precious rainforest.”

Soria informed that testing, treatments, and oxygen tanks have been provided in one of the 262 rapid-response ICUs Avaaz has helped set up in remote areas of the Amazon.
Community members receive medical advice and training in COVID testing at makeshift clinics.

There are no roads deep into the Amazon, so, in those remote regions, food aid and medical supplies are delivered by boat.
Families grow healthy food in community food gardens, while supply chains remain severely disrupted.

Avaaz is a 60-million-person global campaign network that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people shape global decision-making. (‘Avaaz’ means “voice” or “song” in many languages.) Avaaz members live in every nation of the world, with the team spread across 18 countries on six continents, operating in 17 languages.
Guyanese indigenous communities are not neglected by their government, which has taken a multi-pronged approach to address issues of concern to every community countrywide; and Guyanese of Amerindian extraction are not being neglected anymore in the national landscape as Guyana embraces its new, highly-marketable product: Oil.