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accine! Let’s vaccinate everyone!”

Shouts go up from the steep and

muddy banks of the Iriri River in

the heart of the Brazilian Amazon

forest. A team of doctors, nurses,

and nongovernmental organiza-

tion (NGO) workers are hauling

plastic foam boxes from a small

aluminum motorboat. Dozens of

residents of this village, Boa Esperança,

gather on the balcony of a wooden house

to avoid the scorching Sun and await their

COVID-19 vaccines.

Medical teams are a rare sight here. This

crew has traveled 9 hours in pickup trucks

along bumpy roads from the closest city

of Altamira, then sailed a few more hours.

They are at the start of a 17-day river trip

to give shots at settlements in preserved

areas of the world’s biggest tropical forest.

Most residents here are riverine people

(ribeirinhos in Portuguese)—riverside

dwellers who have lived in the Amazon

for centuries, relying on artisanal fishing

and harvesting. The Brazilian government

views them as a traditional group—a cat-

egory that also includes Indigenous tribes

and descendants of runaway enslaved

Africans, known as quilombolas. These

groups were given priority status to re-

ceive the COVID-19 vaccine in a national

plan released in December 2020, following

pressure from human rights activists and

local leaders. Many Indigenous groups,

which receive care from a special federally

funded health department, have been vac-

cinated. But riverine peoples depend on

local municipalities, which are mostly too

poor to do much, for their health care. As

a result, whereas city dwellers in Brazil are

already getting boosters, many people liv-

ing on remote riverbanks still wait in isola-

tion for their first or second shots.

“It is a population very difficult to

reach that has suffered from neglect from

the state for centuries,” says the doctor in

charge of the expedition, Erika Pellegrino

of the Federal University of Pará, Altamira.

The municipal health department of Al-

tamira supplied the COVID-19 shots—two-

dose AstraZeneca and single-dose Janssen

vaccines—that the team is delivering along

with various childhood vaccines. But NGOs,

including the local Socio-environmental

Institute and the U.S.-based group Health

in Harmony, organized and funded the ex-

pedition itself, which cost nearly $20,000.

Grassroots associations helped with the in-

frastructure, converting houses into impro-

vised vaccination centers.

A rainforest expedition brings COVID-19 vaccines to

some of Brazil’s most remote and vulnerable groups

Story and photography by Sofia Moutinho

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