Banca de DEFESA: Amanda Bartolomeu Santos

CARE WAS WITH APURINÃ REMEDY: Health policies, medicines and teas in the fight against covid-19 in Pauini/AM

Apurinã; Indigenous Health; Pharmaceuticals; Medicines; Care.

Among the multiplicity of experiences of the pandemic, this thesis describes scenarios for coping with covid-19 in Pauini/AM, based on dialogues with indigenous people of the Apurinã people, recording strategies of institutions and communities to prevent the arrival of the disease and organize care to the cases that arose. The ethnographic research involved semi-structured interviews, document analysis and experiences from my work at Funai's Coordenação Técnica Local in Pauini. Initially, when telling how the pandemic was in that context, I describe how the numbers and categories they intended to measure were produced, pointing to the possibilities and limits of the versions they tell. I reflect on the construction and management of health policies, investigating movements between national and state scales and the local context, when analyzing the presence and absence of guidelines around medications recommended in primary care. Documents from the Ministry of Health that addressed medicines are described, paying attention to the way in which the government constructed its denialist stance in relations between state and science. Returning to the local context, I describe perceptions about the use of medicines, discussing their place in Indigenous Health polices and articulation in the various care practices carried out by communities. I talk about the work of protection and guidance of their people carried out by the Apurinã Pajés, as well as about the home medicine, many types of teas, mobilized at that time. Thus, I describe ethnographic situations that point to relevant particularities in making and learning teas, such as technologies intertwined in care practices.