Doctors, UCSF dispatch help to Navajo Nation

Teams of health care workers have been sent to assist the Navajo Nation in its battle against the new coronavirus.

The Navajo Nation — which spans three states — has been hard-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 3,204 identified cases and 102 confirmed deaths as of Monday evening.

In late April, health care workers with Doctors Without Borders and the University of California, San Francisco were sent to assist in various communities on the Navajo Nation, including Kayenta and Chinle in Arizona. They were anticipated to remain in the areas for at least a month.

A team of nine people from Doctors Without Borders was sent to provide assistance to the Navajo Nation in Kayenta and Gallup, New Mexico, according to a statement provided to The Arizona Republic by organization spokesperson Nico D’Auterive.

A small part of the team has been working since mid-April with a Pueblo tribe north of Albuquerque, New Mexico,

the statement said.

The rest of the team arrived on the Navajo Nation in late April and was anticipated to remain in the area until at least June, according to the statement.

“As in several other parts of the US, we are working closely with local officials, health care providers and organizations that are directly addressing the needs of groups particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 due to lack of resources to protect themselves and

their families,” the statement said.

The team would focus its efforts on “providing technical guidance to health care facilities and communities to assist with infection prevention and control,” according to the statement. It would also work with “other actors” to expand contact tracing in an attempt to curb further spread of the new virus, the statement said.

They’d also work with tribal leaders to “increase access to health promotion and practical education,” according to the statement.

Jean Stowell, head of the organization’s COVID-19 response team in the U.S., told The Republic the organization decides where to send teams after monitoring data and various risk factors.

“We arrived with the full knowledge of Navajo Nation authorities and the (Indian Health Service) and have been grateful for the openness and level of collaboration they’ve shown our team,” she said.

Seven physicians and 14 nurses from the University of California, San Francisco traveled on April 22 to the Navajo Nation for a one-month voluntary assignment, the university said in a press release.

They would work in teams of seven at hospitals in Chinle and Gallup in Arizona and Shiprock in New Mexico, according to the press release.

The health care workers specialize in critical, intensive and acute care and hospital medicine, the press release said.

According to the press release, the health care workers were requested by university colleagues who work on the Navajo Nation. UCSF has a health fellowship that sends people to the Navajo Nation, so 49 health care workers there are current or former UCSF fellows, including 25 who are Navajo.

“COVID-19 is tearing across the fault lines of existing injustice and structural marginalization, and has hit Navajo Nation at a rate higher than 48 states,” said Sriram Shamasunder, an associate professor of medicine at UCSF and founder of the fellowship program.

“COVID-19 has shown us that we are bound together, all of us,” he continued. “We are grateful for the UCSF teams who chose to go to New York, and now Navajo Nation, and for all the invisible hands who helped to make solidarity happen.”