Institutions provide services to a remote Chaco community

ASUNCIÓN, October 18, 2022. Institutions that are part of the Social Protection Board of the District of Mariscal Estigarribia, Department of Boquerón, arrived at the Santa Rosa Indigenous Community, nearly 800km from Asunción, with health and vital records services for the inhabitants of the remote native settlement.

The institutions are part of ¡Vamos! Social Protection System, promoted by the Social Cabinet of the Presidency of the Republic with the support of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the International Labor Organization (ILO), and funded by the European Union.

"This program aims to support the implementation of this public policy, and one of the projects that we are supporting is the implementation in the territory, which means that we are assisting technically by strengthening the coordination mechanisms at the local level with the installation of social protection tables, which are spaces for inter-institutional coordination in each of the districts," said María Lilia Robledo, UNICEF’s Social Policy Officer.

Oliva Díaz, territory liaison of the Technical Unit of the Social Cabinet in Mariscal Estigarribia, explained that the objective of the event organized by the Social Protection Board is to bring services to the community which are not available in the area or are difficult to get access to.

The Santa Rosa Indigenous Community is made up of about 130 families of the Manjui People and is located about 140km West of Mariscal Estigarribia, having to cross difficult dirt roads to reach it.

Personnel from the Ministry of Interior, the Bureau of Vital Statistics, the Paraguayan Indigenous Institute (INDI), the National Police Identification Department and the Ministry of Public Health and Social Welfare (MSPBS by its Spanish acronym), through the Health Region and the Health Unit of La Patria, participated in the service day.

Thanks to this event, the children of the community, as well as pregnant women, received medical attention, vaccinations and follow-up care from the health unit staff. In addition, the villagers were able to obtain their identity documents.

“I really believe that the work of the Board and the involvement and presence of the cooperating partners is essential so that communities in vulnerable situations such as this one to have access to these basic rights, because without this cooperation, without this work, everything is more difficult,” said Diaz.

The ¡Vamos! Social Protection System was launched in 2018 and is a public policy that seeks to expand access to health and education systems; improve the population's employability conditions; productivity; opportunities for people to insert themselves into economic growth and promote the social inclusion of the population in vulnerable situations.