Vale supports telemedicine initiative that will increase access to health care for indigenous people

Approximately 755 thousand indigenous people, spread across six thousand villages across Brazil, will have easier access to a large network of specialized health professionals. This innovation comes with the implementation of telemedicine, which will enable remote consultations with specialists from different areas. By July, each unit of the 34 Special Indigenous Sanitary Districts (DSEI) will receive a “telehealth kit” and will have teams trained to assist the indigenous people in receiving care. Vale will donate all the necessary devices (notebooks, cameras and exam equipment such as electrocardiograms, spirometers, portable retinographs and portable multiparametric monitors) to the Special Secretariat of Indigenous Health (Sesai).

The initiative is one of the strategies that seeks to improve the quality of care and primary care in Brazil´s Public Health Care System (SUS), integrating services and education through information technology tools. In addition to addressing and preventing Covid-19, telehealth will offer other benefits, such as reduced time and cost of care in addition to reducing the displacement of patients and health professionals and contributing to the improvement in the quality of care, by enabling access to specialists through health professionals who work in areas that are difficult to access.

“This partnership with Sesai brings us great satisfaction. The indigenous topic is one of the pillars of our strategic planning, which focuses on ethnodevelopment, valuing the preservation of cultural memory, strengthening the role of these populations and sustainable programs like this”, Hugo Barreto comments, director of Sustainability and Voluntary Social Investment at Vale.

“Telemedicine has been a long-time dream of ours and now it is going to become a reality. Without this resource, the logistics are much more complex so that the indigenous people have access to more specialized services. This equipment will certainly provide more quality of life to the indigenous people”, emphasizes the Special Secretary for Indigenous Health of the Ministry of Health, Robson Santos da Silva.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, in March of last year, Vale has been committed to intensifying support to indigenous peoples and other traditional communities (fishermen and quilombola communities) where it operates, supporting indigenous peoples mainly in the areas where it operates - Pará, Maranhão, Espírito Santo and Rio de Janeiro. Our work is based on respect for the rights of these populations. Find out more here:
http://www.vale.com/esg/en/Pages/IndigenousPeoplesAndTraditionalCommunity.aspx