【Wen Cai Lixun】
One in every four people is diagnosed, and the infection rate in Nan’ao Township, Yilan is 2.8 times the average in Taiwan. Many tribes even closed their villages on their own and had to rely on the outside to deliver supplies. The livelihood of the tribesmen was greatly affected, and they sighed that “the harvest of peaches can wait for isolation?” Why did the indigenous people become the vulnerable group of the new crown?
Fang Hesheng, who is known as “the strongest lilong on the surface”, has been traveling through the Aohua tribe recently. Fang Hesheng worked for 24 years in the area around Taipei City Nan Airport. In April of this year, following more than 100 confirmed cases of new coronary pneumonia in Japan, he traveled to Jinyang, Jinyue, Aohua and other places in South Australia in order to deliver supplies, and even went to Taitung in early June.
“The Jinyang tribe was the first to close down the village,” Lin Kunzheng, founder of Guppy Hewlett-Packard Technology, recalled what he saw in Jinyang a while ago, “at 11 in the morning, the police car was outside, and there was no one on the whole road, only me and Fang Lichang, A teacher who was in charge of contact because he had a negative PCR yesterday.”
The township with the highest diagnosis rate, the Yihua tribe is the top two
There are a total of 7 villages in Nan’ao Township, and more than half of them, like Jinyang, have voluntarily closed their villages due to the epidemic. As of the end of May, the confirmed rate of new coronary pneumonia in Taiwan was 8.9%, but more than 20% in Yilan Nanao and Hualien Xiulin. On average, one person in 4 to 5 people in the township was diagnosed, surpassing the densely populated Sanchong, Zhonghe and other places in New Taipei.
In late May, a reporter from “World” visited South Australia. During the closure of the village of the Nanao tribe, Jinyang Elementary School teacher Wei Wenhao assisted Fang Hesheng and Lin Kunzheng in sending supplies. He pointed out that following the opening of Suhua to traffic, the number of tourists in South Australia has been increasing. In order to avoid the aggravation of the epidemic, the tribe meeting decided that non-locals must be quickly screened before entering the tribe. When the tribe sees a face, they will ask, “Are you from South Australia? Please don’t enter the tribe directly.”
Quick screening is difficult to buy, and the price is also a burden
After two months of closing down the villages, although the epidemic situation in Nan’ao and Xiulin has gradually slowed down, it also reflects the blind spots of epidemic prevention policies.
The most direct is that it is not easy to purchase quick screening reagents. In South Australia, there is only one Jinchang Pharmacy in the township. After the real-name system of quick screening was launched, 78 sets of reagents were sold out in one hour. Until May 23, there were only 156 sets of reagents per day. Not only South Australians came to buy quick screening, but some Suao townspeople who were just across the road from the pharmacy also lined up here.
In particular, the journey from the tribe to the plains can be as fast as 20 minutes, and it can take 1 or 2 hours to look up. Many people spend time going down the mountain, but they can’t buy a quick sieve. Not to mention the 500 yuan for a set of quick screening reagents, which is also a burden for some clansmen.
It’s hard to get a quick screening, and the difficulty of seeking medical treatment for tribes at medium and high altitudes is the key. Ciwang Teyra, an assistant professor of the Department of Social Work at National Taiwan University and a Taroko citizen, contacted a friend who lives in Jianshi Township, Hsinchu County, and learned that before the implementation of the positive diagnosis policy on May 23, if a member of the clan was unwell or had fast The test was positive, and it took more than 5 hours to go back and forth between the tribe and the hospital. It is not easy to call an epidemic prevention taxi in the local area, and can only rely on family members to pick up and drop off, and family members are often diagnosed at the same time. “It ended up being that if the situation wasn’t acute, neither quick screening nor PCR was done,” she said.
I don’t dare to screen quickly, because I’m afraid of “winning”
Income consideration is the key to medical treatment or not. “Some of them only take (cold) medicine, but insist not to get screened quickly, because many of them drive big trucks and have variable income,” said a doctor who recently visited the tribe.
Guo Yongguang, who lives in the Wuta tribe in South Australia, pointed out that many of the tribe are atypical workers and the breadwinner of their families. Daily and hourly wages are the norm. Quick sieve.”
Public opinion blames these people for being selfish. “Many people who can speak these words are less financially burdened; but when you are in his position, you may make the same decision,” Ciwang Teyra said bluntly.
Taking Taoyuan Fuxing and Jianshi Township in Hsinchu as examples, it is the season of peach production now, and the season of bamboo shoots when the epidemic first broke out in April.
Among the tribes that Zhang Weiqi, an associate professor of the Department of Environmental and Cultural Resources at Tsinghua University, knows, there are tribesmen who harvest and cook bamboo shoots, and then send them down the mountain to sell them. Usually, one person and the whole family are diagnosed.
Some also use the harvesting of peaches as the main income of the whole family. There is no extra money to hire manpower to harvest the peaches. It is impossible for the peaches to mature until the isolation is lifted. “Then what should I do? Wait until the peaches rot?” Zhang Weiqi said. The voice of expats.
Cooperation in epidemic prevention requires a more active role
From work, living environment to medical resources, a new coronary pneumonia is like a mirror, which clearly reflects the long-term structural problems encountered by the indigenous peoples.
Zhang Weiqi also said that the responsibility of care, condolences, and guidance for quarantine of the infected tribes mostly falls on the social workers of the Wenjian Station. Due to the uneven medical resources, the tribes mostly rely on the self-help network to share information and deliver food, and the human feelings network often becomes the transmission of wrong information. way to expand the panic.
The nationally applicable epidemic prevention policy is difficult to implement in the original and remote villages. “Because of our historical complex, we aboriginal people do not trust the government very much. We will believe information in the interpersonal circle, but it may not be correct. If we can get help from priests and doctors of aboriginal nationality, our tribesmen are willing to trust them.” Zhang Weiqi thinks.
A number of aboriginal scholars and medical professionals said almost in unison that the time for the tribe to obtain and understand the epidemic prevention information is indeed later than that of the metropolitan area. In addition, the Omicron epidemic situation is changing faster, and the central government’s rolling adjustment policy is also fast. The tribe understands more laborious.
Not only the original hometown, but also the people in the remote villages are facing many similar difficulties. Ciwang Teyra, who is concerned regarding the health rights of the indigenous people, believes that the indigenous people should be most familiar with the original hometown. When encountering a disaster or epidemic, an emergency response team should be set up to collect information regarding the original hometown and provide it to the Executive Yuan and the Ministry of Health and Welfare immediately. related measures.
Especially from the perspective of public health and medical care, it is necessary to consider social welfare resources. “It is not that they have not cooperated, but they have to play a more active role,” she said.
【Extended reading】
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