After being lost for 25 days in the Brazilian Amazon, two indigenous children aged seven and nine were found severely malnourished as they ate only wild fruits.
Januario Carneiro da Cunha Neto, the coordinator of the Indigenous Health District in Manaus, the capital of the Amazon state, where the two children went missing, told AFP that the two children, Glocon and Gleason, were found on Tuesday by one of their relatives “35 km from the place where they went missing.” They suffer from “severe malnutrition and dehydration”.
He also explained that “one of the family’s acquaintances went to search for firewood and stumbled upon the two children.”
‘The danger to their lives is gone’
He also revealed that the two children, during their stay in the forest, “drank only rainwater and lakes, and ate the surfa” (domesticated dura), a fruit rich in carbohydrates and fats.
However, he pointed out that following receiving hospital care, the two children gained “weight and the danger to their lives was removed.”
Glucon, 7, arrives at the hospital on March 17 (AFP)
For her part, Rosinetti da Silva Carvalho, the mother of the two children and 10 others, told local media that they “usually ate sorfa, as my oldest son always took a bag with him when he went out to fish.”
Since February 18
It is reported that the two brothers, who belong to the Mora ethnic group, have been missing since February 18, the day they went out to hunt birds in the forest in Manikuri district, 330 kilometers from Manaus. They were found by chance, as official searches were suspended a week following their disappearance.
During the long days when the two children failed to find their way home, the older child Gleeson took care of his younger brother, carrying him on his back while he was exhausted from the lack of food and water.
This incident reminds of an adventure experienced in early 2021 by pilot Antonio Sina, as his tourist plane crashed and he was lost in the Amazon, where he spent 38 days.