The infant mortality rate in the first year of life among the Yanomami population reached 114.3 per thousand births in 2020.
According to data from the United Nations (UN), the number is 10 times the rate of Brazil and exceeds that of the African countries Sierra Leone and Central African Republic, which are among the poorest in the world and have the highest mortality rates of children. Sierra Leone had, in 2020, a mortality rate of 80.5 and the Central African Republic, 77.
According to a report by the Yanomami Mission, released by the Ministry of Health, deaths of newborn babies accounted for almost 60% of deaths in children under one year old from 2018 to 2022. According to the report, this reveals a lack of attention to pregnancy, to childbirth and the care received at birth. The document indicates malnutrition as one of the main causes of death in children. The Yanomami Mission was held from the 15th to the 25th of January.
Sonia Lucena, a doctor in nutrition and retired professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco, explains that malnutrition has a severe impact on children’s immunity.
“It is very common in malnutrition to have an acute respiratory infection, sometimes pneumonia, and often what kills a malnourished child is septcemia, because her organism, because it is not able to protect itself, also loses the conditions to recover in the face of of these diseases. And the impairment in the normal growth and development of the brain in this early stage of life, it is irrecoverable”, said Sonia.
Data collected since 2015 point to the frequency of underweight. In 2021, this index reached 56.5% of Yanomami children. Almost half of pregnant women were underweight in 2022.
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