The Forum urges States to undertake and promote the expansion of their national health systems in order to provide holistic health programmes for indigenous children that incorporate preventive medical practices and family and community participation. States are urged to address the issues of malnutrition of indigenous children victimized by poverty by adopting special measures to ensure and protect the cultivation of traditional food crops.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the World Health Organization (WHO), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), States, non-governmental organizations and indigenous peoples’ organizations join efforts in implementing appropriate expert health-care actions to prevent disastrous disease problems affecting indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation and recent contact, and consider adopting rapid-effect emergency procedures in situations where the health situation is critical, as it is at present in the Javari Valley in Brazil.
The Permanent Forum recommends that the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Inter-Agency Support Group on Indigenous Peoples’ Issues, sponsor an expert group meeting on HIV/AIDS by 2019, which would include the full and effective participation of indigenous peoples living with and affected by HIV/AIDS, to analyse the sociocultural and economic determinants of health for HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment in indigenous communities, with the Forum’s collaboration, in order to ensure the realization of target 3.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Permanent Forum reiterates its recommendation made at its eighteenth session for the Pan American Health Organization to prepare a study on the advancements in indigenous maternal health, including with the participation of indigenous midwives (E/2019/43, para. 45). The Permanent Forum also recommends that WHO prepare similar studies in other regions.