From 2020 to 2022, indigenous people infected with the COVID-19 virus died at a rate more than double that of Mexico’s general population, an epidemiological study revealed.

Epidemiologist Oswaldo Medina Gómez analyzed the statistics of the Epidemiological Surveillance System for Respiratory Diseases, finding that “clinical conditions and conditions of vulnerability due to social deficiencies” were the main causes for which 9.8% of indigenous people with positive cases died, “in contrast to 4.6% among the non-indigenous population.”

The impact among men was greater than among women, noted Dr. Medina Gómez and his co-author Jordi Josué Medina Vallegas in an article published on October 22 in Ciencia y Salud Colectiva titled Social Inequalities in COVID-19 Mortality among Indigenous Peoples of Mexico.

Their reference data was extracted from the 2020 National Population Census, which found that 11.8 million people, equivalent to 9.4 percent of the total national population, are descended from native or ancestral populations, or retain the traditions or customs of an indigenous people. Half of indigenous people, 50.5%, live in the southern states of Oaxaca, Chiapas, Yucatán, and Guerrero. The majority of them, 52 percent, live in rural communities with fewer than 2,500 inhabitants.

This is the reason why their “social and economic conditions increase their vulnerability to diseases,” since “they tend to live in isolated or poorly connected communities, with limited and poor-quality access to health services.” Although the government designed vaccination plans aimed at other vulnerable groups, “elderly adults, health personnel and people with some comorbidity,” there was no attention particularly directed toward indigenous peoples “beyond the dissemination of information on health promotion and prevention in native languages, and this population was not considered a priority group for vaccination against COVID-19,” the researchers noted.

Furthermore, the scientific article denounces the “increase in access barriers to health services that led to higher mortality from other diseases.” Throughout Latin America, “during the COVID-19 pandemic, the most vulnerable social groups had limitations in carrying out actions to contain the disease, such as strengthening hygiene measures and home isolation, which caused an increase in inequality in income, employment and access to health services, affecting mortality and lethality in indigenous groups in several countries in the region.”

The research found that the lack of access to education turned out to be a death sentence even among the five economic levels by which INEGI measures the general population: “the lack of access to education was significantly associated with death from COVID-19 in all quintiles.”

Inaccessibility to health services produced an equally deadly result: “the results obtained by the lack of access to health services in the indigenous sector, mainly in the most vulnerable population quintile, reveal the barriers to timely care and diagnosis.”

Researchers warn that “social and economic deficiencies are determining factors, increasing the risk of infectious diseases such as COVID-19,” since “these deficiencies are preponderant in indigenous groups who lack access to health centers and basic sanitation, and live in very poor sanitary conditions.”

They recommend involving the highest risk sectors in manners that respect self-management. “It is necessary to build dialogue and active participation of communities for the design and implementation of strategies in terms of promotion, prevention, care, and rehabilitation adapted to different contexts, based on their autonomy and integrating each community’s knowledge systems, which lead to constructing health systems with a community-based approach and strengthening support networks whose results create more effective strategies.”

link to original article: https://cienciaesaudecoletiva.com.br/artigos/desigualdades-sociales-en-la-letalidad-por-covid19-en-los-pueblos-indigenas-de-mexico/19179