"A community health center treating Native Americans in the Seattle area issued an urgent call for medical supplies to local, state and federal agencies – but instead received 'a box of body bags,' according to a report....
'We asked for tests, and they sent us a box of body bags....'
The federal government has an obligation to provide health care to all Native Americans according to longstanding treaties with Indian tribes."
https://nypost.com/2020/05/06/native-american-health-center-receives-body-bags-not-supplies/
Another article on Native Americans across the country
COVID-19 is surging through the
Navajo community, which is suffering one of the highest infection rates per capita in the country. And the peak is still weeks away.
Dr. Sriram Shamasunder, co-founder of the HEAL Initiative at the University of California San Francisco, has been practicing emergency medicine from the back of a car. He’s there with a team of UCSF nurses and doctors helping the Navajo COVID-19 response team on the ground. The care this team can provide is extremely limited.
“[The] native population [is] similar to vulnerable patients all over the country, whether black or Latinx population… They are more susceptible,” Shamasunder told “Nightline.” “New Mexico Native Americans only make up 5% of the population but they make up 20% of COVID-positive [patients].”
Shamasunder has teamed up with locals like the COPE program’s Nitumigaabow Champagne. They’ve been doing rounds at a motel in Gallup, New Mexico, where the unsheltered and the sick can go to get off the street and away from extended families.
Most of the burden of caring for the sick in their community falls on the fellow Navajo. Historically, the U.S. government hasn’t helped much, breaking dozens of promises with Native American tribes for centuries, dating far past Johnson v. M’Intosh in 1823.
An estimated 30% of people who live on the Navajo reservations do not have access to running water, and turn to outdoor pumps to get their supply. It makes it that much more difficult to fulfill the constant handwashing necessary during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the urgent care facility, patients pull up and they’re intubated even though it’s not technically an ICU or hospital. If their condition is critical, the only way to save their lives is to get a helicopter. But after that, Tom says, she doesn’t know what happens to the patients.
Congress has approved $8 billion for tribal assistance for COVID-19 relief, but that money has to be split among 574 tribes. Tribal governments say the money still hasn’t arrived yet.
Navajo community left to fight COVID-19 with limited resources
