The Amazon and its people have been suffering with surges in illegal gold mining. Illegal gold mining causes several health and social issues, including mercury contamination and increases in violence. In Brazil, increases in gold mining have been particularly high in Indigenous lands and the main cause of the recent humanitarian crisis still affecting the Yanomami people, in Brazil. With this research, we used remote sensing and causal inference analysis to attribute cause and quantify the effect of illegal gold mining driving surges of malaria among the Yanomami, and among all Indigenous lands in Brazil. We demonstrated that an increase in 1% in mining leads to an increase of 32.7% in malaria cases among the Yanomami. When considering all Indigenous people, the effect of mining causing surges in malaria incidence varied with distance urban centres, and therefore, healthcare.
Program (GMT):
• 16:00-16:05: Welcome and Introduction of speaker: Vivian Lutz, TPSF member
• 16:05-16:45: Mining on malaria transmission in the Amazon , Daniela Dutra, Stanford University
• 16:45-17:00: Q&A
• 17:00-17:05: Closing remarks
Speaker
Daniela de Angeli Dutra
Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Dr. Daniela de Angeli Dutra is a post-doctoral scholar in Biology at the Stanford University, USA. She obtained her PhD from the University of Otago, Newzealand, winning many accolades during her research tenure at Otago. She is a disease ecologist and parasitologist who strives to understand the patterns and mechanisms of parasite spread and the possible ways of mitigation of pathogen impacts.
Most of her research is focused on malaria and malaria-like (haemosporidian) parasites. She applies remote sensing, modelling and AI to investigate the macroecological and evolutionary patterns of parasite-host dynamics and the consequences of changes in land use and climate on disease transmission.
Author of 38 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Dutra is active in capacity building as research mentor of under-graduate and graduate students, tutor and guest lecturer.