The new crown pneumonia epidemic is severe, and Brazil in South America has the second highest number of infections in the world. In the city of Itaituba, in the state of Para, schools, churches, bars and restaurants have all closed; however, many repair tool shops are still open, renting and selling excavation tools, Others sell parts for equipment, all of which are for illegal gold prospectors to cut down trees and mine for buried gold.
The city of Itaituba is located on the edge of the Amazon forest and is known locally as "Nugget Town". For decades, the neighbouring towns of Novo Progresso and Rondônia have served as a hub for illegal gold prospectors from all over the country, who travel to the rainforest to mine gold.
Eric Karipuna, leader of the Karipuna, an indigenous group in Rondônia, said the illegal mining of gold was exacerbated by the withdrawal of inspectors because of the pandemic.
Experts and local residents believe that with the international gold price reaching a 10-year high of $2,000 an ounce, the situation of illegal gold mining is believed to be more serious.
In 2019, an estimated 9,762 square kilometers of the Amazon rainforest was deforested, an all-time high. In the first three months of the year, deforestation was up 51.4 percent from the same period last year. According to the Institute of People and Environment of the Amazon, a non-profit organization, about 43 percent of deforestation is in the state of Pará.
Illegal gold mining not only destroys pristine rainforests, but also spreads diseases. One of them is malaria. The most affected are the indigenous groups living in the Amazon forest close to Venezuela, namely the Karipuna, Munduruku and Yanomami. . The provincial government of Pará said that in the first six months of this year, the transmission rate of malaria increased by 17.8%. In addition, at least one Aboriginal has died from the novel coronavirus.
The technology of these illegal gold mining is very backward, for example, the water in the mine pit becomes a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Rachel Lowe, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: "The pits dug by gold miners are the most suitable for the breeding of Anopheles."
In addition, the camps where these illegal gold prospectors live are unsanitary, and they rarely use mosquito nets and other protective gear. Andre Siqueira, an epidemiologist at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro, points out that these remote areas lack public medical facilities. "Gold diggers generally lack the knowledge to prevent and treat malaria," he said. "Even if there are hospitals and clinics nearby, they will not seek medical attention when they get sick, but will only buy medicines to take them."
Since malaria can be transmitted from person to person, when the gold diggers left, they spread the disease to other places, most notably the Aboriginal people who lived nearby.
Karo Munduruku, a member of the Munduruku tribe, has lived in the Aboriginal Reserve near Itaituba for most of her life. He worries that the spread of the disease will eventually affect the health of his family. He still remembered two brothers suffering from malaria many years ago, with weeks of fever, chills, vomiting and night sweats, and he didn't want that to happen again.
For two decades, scientists have been warning that the more humans move into forests, the more likely they are to contract infectious diseases from living things. Ana Lucia Tourinho, an ecologist at the Federal University of Mato Grosso in Brazil, said: "When a virus that has not been seen during evolution leaves its original habitat, It can easily cause problems.”
Several studies in Brazil point to a direct relationship between the deforestation of the country's tropical forests and the spread of infectious diseases. A 2015 study by the Brazilian government-funded Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA) found that a 1 percent increase in deforested rainforest was associated with a 2 to 3 percent increase in malaria cases.
This study collects data from 773 cities in China. In addition to malaria, deforestation has also been linked to Leishmaniasis. Leishmaniasis is a disease caused by a parasite called Leishmania, which can be spread by the bite of a sand fly, or sand fly, other animals.
"A sealed forest acts as a barrier, preventing contact with the animals that inhabit it, which are hosts of many disease-causing microorganisms," explains ecologist Torilao. "When people divide the forest, it opens the door to travel." The path of the forest probing forms a time bomb that spreads disease."