By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 29 1996 (IPS)

The scourge of AIDS has spread to the Tirian community – a group of indigenous people living in the remote northern area of Brazil.

Health authorities expressed alarm at the potential of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) to spread in such closed communities where “safe sex” practices – such as the use of condoms – are practically unknown.

Unlike their Brazilian neighbours, the Tirians across the border in Surinam live side by side with whites, in a small town fully equipped with the dingy brothels typical of jungle areas.

One Tirian woman, Sueli Tiro, spoke through an interpreter on the Globo TV network to explain how she was infected with the “White Man’s disease” by her husband before returning home from Surinam.

He is now dead along with 11 other indigenous people who have been infected with the AIDS virus since 1985, according to Health Ministry statistics. Thirteen AIDS cases have been reported among the Tirians – not significant perhaps when compared to the nationwide total of 86,000 cases, but authorities are concerned.

“Indigenous communities are very closed societies. That presents an enormous danger of the disease spreading. The tribes’ very existence is jeopardised” by AIDS, warned the president of the National Foundation of the Indian (FUNAI), Julio Gaiger, in an interview with IPS.

To forestall any explosion from that time-bomb, the Health Ministry has launched a campaign to foster the use of condoms among Brazil’s 325,000 indigenous people.

The effort will focus chiefly on villages or communities near areas where “garimpeiros” (gold-miners) are concentrated, hydroelectric dams or logging and mining companies, all considered high-risk areas due to the indigenous peoples’ contact with the outside world.

The coordinator of the Health Ministry’s programme of sexually transmitted diseases, Pedro Chequer, stressed that indigenous groups are among the country’s most vulnerable sectors.

“The first thing we have to do is explain to them what is AIDS,” said the president of FUNAI, the government body in charge of protecting indigenous peoples. Such groups need to understand “that it is a new disease, for which there is yet no cure.”

The campaign has begun among the Tirian community with the distribution of more than 600 condoms. Speaking through an interpreter, a Health Ministry official explains to his astonished listeners what AIDS is and how to prevent it.

“In this war the bow and arrow are of no use,” comments a member of the tribe. The rest study the condoms curiously and laugh at the new object brought by the whites.

While the health official graphically describes how to use the condom, the tribe’s shaman begins to pray. He says he will not give up, and that he will find an herb to cure AIDS.

According to Jane Galvao, the coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Association for the Fight against AIDS, the “big challenge” of the campaign is “how to carry out a prevention programme among such groups while respecting cultural diversity.”

She pointed out that rather than health experts, anthropologists must head such efforts, people “who have studied and understand such cultures, are familiar with their social dimensions, know how to discuss health in their language, and have credibility among such groups.”

“If it is difficult to raise awareness among city-dwellers on the need to use condoms for AIDS prevention, how much more so among indigenous groups,” she said.

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