PAHO’s Response to the Drought Emergency in the Brazilian Amazon
The Amazon Rainforest is the earth’s largest rainforest, containing the greatest biodiversity on the planet. In Brazil, it covers ~60% of the country's total land area, spanning eight states and with eight international borders. Development indicators in the Brazilian Amazon are the most fragile in the country, including the weakest access to primary health care and specialized services, the access to public health programs such as immunization, non-communicable diseases, nutrition, elimination programs, and the access to safe water, hygiene and sanitation.
The region is home to an estimated 25 million people, including more than half of Brazil's Indigenous population and 38% of Brazil's Quilombola population (descendants of escaped African slaves). Rivers, streams and lakes are essential for survival in the Amazon region, profoundly influencing daily activities, shaping culture, transportation, and food security and the movement of people and essential goods for trade and to maintain life. In addition, rivers are essential to health system access for the population.
Brazil's Amazon region is suffering its worst drought in 43 years, directly affecting more than 2 million people. Prior to the emergency, ~10% of the population in the Amazon region had access to drinking water systems. The current lack of access to safe water and food is now life-threatening for at least 600K people and could increase to over 1.2 million by December 2023. Additionally, Amazonas state is experiencing among the most unsafe levels of air quality in the world due to the climate-driven forest fires.
This climate-driven crisis led to exacerbated existing public health issues, emerging infectious diseases, and increased vulnerability in communities already struggling with a lack of basic services and poor access to primary and specialized healthcare. Therefore, 79 municipalities in Amazonas and Acre states have declared a state of emergency due to this climate-driven disaster.
PAHO’s office in Brazil has been working with key partners to support national and sub-national authorities to respond to this climate-driven emergency. PAHO is uniquely positioned to respond to this emergency as the only UN agency fully integrated into the National Emergency Operations Center (EOC), providing support through expert technical teams working in key areas of response.
At the sub-national level, PAHO have deployed experts to strengthen emergency coordination mechanisms within the national EOC, support information management and situation reports, as well as to provide logistical and technical support in environmental health, disease surveillance and response, as well as drought response planning support in soon to be affected states. Critical health interventions include identifying alternative solutions to enable healthcare, and innovations to overcome logistical challenges to reach the population, including vulnerable groups, with life-saving interventions.
Additionally, key Government response actions include: dredging of rivers, emergency assistance and strengthening of health actions, defense, and public security, purchase of firefighting aircraft and environmental actions forest fire prevention, and environmental actions.
The National Monitoring and Alert Center for Natural Disasters (Cemaden) predicts that the drought in the Amazon could last until February 2024, coinciding with the maximum intensity of the El Niño phenomenon - a highly concerning situation for Brazil and neighboring countries. The existing challenges relating to a lack of access to food and water, and/or delays in access to health services for the population, particularly remote populations, may lead to cross-border migration; increased morbidity and mortality through exacerbated existing health conditions (Non-communicable diseases, mental health, etc.), triggering of new health condition (e.g. respiratory diseases due to unsafe air quality), enhanced vulnerability to disease due to lack of public health programs (immunization, malaria, TB, HIV and endemic diseases, laboratory networks and outbreaks, etc.) and malnutrition.
PAHO seeks support to continue to work with partners to strive to overcome difficulties in maintaining primary health care services and access to specialized health care, address critical gaps in food security, as well as the lack of data to orient live-saving interventions, strengthen health surveillance to enable a robust characterization of notifiable and non-notifiable diseases and illnesses; understand the impact on Indigenous populations; and to implement crucial environmental health actions.