MSF works to prevent spread of COVID-19 among indigenous people in Mato Grosso do Sul
Disease
How the score is calculated
The score starts at 8. It adds points from recorded affected, deaths, displaced and casualty counts, plus terms found in the story title, event type or status. For each count, only its highest matching band is used.
- Affected people
- 1–999: +5 · 1,000–9,999: +12 · 10,000–99,999: +20 · 100,000–999,999: +28 · 1 million+: +35
- Deaths
- 1–9: +8 · 10–99: +14 · 100–999: +22 · 1,000+: +30
- Displaced people
- 1–9,999: +6 · 10,000–99,999: +12 · 100,000+: +18
- Casualties
- 100 or more: +8
- Story wording
- +10 for terms such as catastrophe, famine, war, conflict, major earthquake, mass casualty or critical. Otherwise, +5 for active, ongoing, emergency, outbreak, cyclone or hurricane.
Score bands: Watch 0–24 · Moderate 25–49 · High 50–74 · Critical 75–100. Scores are capped at 100. Missing or unparseable figures add no points.
This is a rule-based WorldsAid triage indicator, not an official or independently validated classification. It does not account for recency or local context, and it can understate events with incomplete reporting. Check the linked sources.
Historical record
Status: CLOSED · Imported 2026-10-07
Closed for this historical import at the site owner’s request; not a new assessment of current conditions.
In brief
- What happenedIndigenous communities in Brazil have been especially vulnerable to the new coronavirus COVID-19.
- How many affectedThe cited sources do not yet provide a reliable affected-person total.
- What help is neededIn this area, these medical conditions appear to be linked to changes in traditional ways of life, as people become increasingly sedentary and eat more processed foods.
What changed
First retained snapshot
No earlier verified snapshot is present in the recovered dataset. This record remains available as the historical baseline.
Situation
Indigenous communities in Brazil have been especially vulnerable to the new coronavirus COVID-19. In Mato Grosso do Sul, a state in central Brazil which is home to many indigenous communities, teams from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) are helping prevent, diagnose and treat COVID-19 . With few doctors in Mato Grosso do Sul, there is often no one to identify the moment at which a person with worsening symptoms needs hospital care. When they finally arrive at hospital, it may be too late to save them. There is also a high prevalence of chronic diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension , among the indigenous communities of Mato Grosso do Sul. These conditions increase the risk of a person infected with COVID-19 developing severe symptoms and dying. In this area, these medical conditions appear to be linked to changes in traditional ways of life, as people become increasingly sedentary and eat more processed foods. The chronic diseases often go untreated due to the obstacles faced by many people in accessing healthcare – from discrimination in health units to a lack of proper health information. “Where COVID-19 has arrived, it has left a trail of destruction,” says indigenous leader Oto Lara, from the village of Colonia Nova, in the indigenous land of Taunay/Ypegue. “Our concern increased when we learned that the disease was already in the neighbouring cities, because we knew that we had no medical facility here.” Since 27 August, MSF’s mobile teams have been visiting 11 villages in the region, providing consultations at local health posts and doing home visits to monitor people who have tested positive for coronavirus and to detect new cases. Where COVID-19 has arrived, it has left a trail of destruction.
Linked charities and agencies
WorldsAid verification
A WorldsAid editor reviewed this record against 1 attributed source, cleaned feed formatting and checked the crisis, place and reporting date. No reliable human-impact total was promoted where the source did not provide one. Earlier observations remain in the evidence history instead of being silently overwritten.
What we knew when
- WorldsAid record entered the retained historical dataset.
- Last verification represented by this immutable snapshot.
Earlier figures are never replaced by later values; additional observations are retained as new ledger entries.
Provenance
This page renders the last verified WorldsAid cache directly in HTML. It does not treat generated summaries as primary evidence.
Cached dataset: worldsai_drup771.sql.gz
Verified
SHA-256 4590552e8d569b19cbef055fbf1dbf26a622e2d8d9ac1c0be707460720206b2b