AIDSWEEKLY Plus, Monday, 9 December 1996

Brazil, concerned about the risk of HIV infection among Indians, launched a campaign to educate tribes about the dangers of AIDS and ways of preventing the spread of sexually-transmitted disease (STD).

Anthropologists are trained to teach AIDS awareness to the Indians and medical services funded to prevent the risk of the disease decimating tribal populations. "We have found that though the Indian population is at low risk, it is highly vulnerable (to the spread of HIV)," Pedro Chequer, campaign coordinator.

Estimates of how many Indians have contracted HIV vary because Brazilian records on infections do not categorize them according to race. The National Indian Foundation (Funai) believes only 20 of Brazil's 320,000 Indians have HIV, while the Catholic Church's Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) has said 11 Indians have died of AIDS since 1989 and another four are HIV positive.

Concern over AIDS among the Indians was raised recently by reports that a woman of the Tiriyo tribe in the northern state of Para had the virus and might be spreading it among her people, who number 380 and have a polygamous culture. The new campaign provides educational material in Indian languages. "Every tribe must have its own," Chequer said.

In addition, the Ministry of Health promotes studies of Indian culture and an education campaign in 1,310 schools involving 2,504 teachers and about 62,000 indigenous students.

Chequer said one problem the AIDS campaign faced was different sexual mores. He cited a tribe in the northern state of Amapa where widows were available to any man. "They have cultures that must be respected, but for which we must find a mechanism for effective AIDS prevention," he said, adding that recent studies had found that 10-15 percent of Brazil's Indians had some STD.

The campaign concentrates on Indians at higher risk, such as those living near urban areas or who have regular contact with mining and forestry workers, particularly the "garimpeiros," as wildcat gold-diggers are known in Portuguese.

Chequer said discussions had also begun with the military on how to use army personnel, often the only "whites" in isolated areas of the Amazon, in the AIDS campaign.

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