Jump in child deaths reveals impact of industrialisation on Amazon’s Indigenous peoples

A Yanomami mother and child wait at a field hospital in the Indigenous people’s protected territory. The district has the worst infant mortality in the country, at almost 80 deaths per 1,000 live births – seven times the Brazilian average, and 20 times that of England and Wales. Photograph: Raphael Alves/EPA

The infant mortality rate among the Indigenous peoples of Brazil jumped by 16% last year, according to new data, as experts warn that the expansion of legal and illegal extractive industries in the Amazon rainforest has had profound effects on the health and quality of life of Indigenous people living in unprotected areas.

Over the past 50 years, the Amazon’s landscape has changed dramatically, with about 17% of the primary forest now gone, replaced by towns, roads, cattle ranches, mines and vast fields of soya beans.