Health indicators in intermediate amazon cities during the Covid-19 health crisis: signs of social segregation and environmental injustice

Abstract

This article aims to expose the worsening of sanitary and environmental injustice in the Brazilian Amazon caused by the pandemic and the lack of coordination of actions by the Federal government, with emphasis on two objects: the situation of Amazonian municipalities, with emphasis on Manaus (AM) and the differentiated impact of the pandemic on indigenous peoples. To this end, data from CNES, REGIC, the 2016 Road and Waterway Connections survey and DATASUS were compared. In addition, indigenous peoples are doubly affected, either by Covid-19 or by the systematic violation of their territorial rights. Finally, the work concludes that in the intermediate cities and in the Amazonian capitals, the situation of sanitary collapse was predominant because: (i) these cities act as subregional poles in high complexity care in the Amazon; (ii) they have a high proportion of informal workers, which, as pointed out by some studies, has a positive correlation with cases of contamination and death by Covid-19; (iii) most of the population lives in subnormal agglomerations, which facilitate contamination by the virus (iv) there was negligence in the way of dealing with the pandemic by the Federal Government and subnational entities, disregarding the additional severity of the pandemic in region.