Hello Jack,

An acute health crisis is ravaging the Yanomami people in Brazil’s northern Amazon, one year on from a major government operation intended to rid the area of illegal goldminers.

More than 300 Indigenous people have died in the territory in the last year, most of them children under five.

There are appalling levels of malnutrition, malaria and flu.

All this is being caused by the presence of thousands of illegal goldminers, who have destroyed and polluted large parts of the Yanomami territory. They are also responsible for countless attacks, rapes and murders of Yanomami people.

When President Lula came to power a year ago he launched a major operation to remove the miners. But since then they’ve been returning in droves, using illegal airstrips to access even remote areas. Much of the mining is now controlled by two of Brazil’s biggest organized crime gangs.

Health services in the area are barely functioning, and nine health posts that should have re-opened are still shut.

President Lula has recently announced new efforts to stop the mining. It’s absolutely essential that this is part of a sustained, comprehensive operation to remove the miners permanently, to provide the intensive healthcare that’s so desperately needed – and that this is sustained for the long term.