1972 Press Photo Natives on bank of Amazon await hospital launch-Luzeiro V

Journeying each day by launch to the scattered jungle villages along the banks of the Amazon, Dr. Zildomar Deucher can see the river dwellers running along the shore or trailing him by canoe as they wait for his boat to dock. As an intern at Rowson Hospital in Buenos Aires, he had been deeply moved by reports of the distressing health conditions and the urgent need for medical attention in the Amazon River Valley. In 1960, when asked by the Seventh-Day Adventists Church to supervise their hospital in Belem, Brazil, he welcomed the opportunity to try his hand as a missionary physician. At first he was dismayed by the grimness of the task confronting him. "The textbook diseases which I studied have become very real," he wrote to a friend. "Here in this primordial jungle ridden with parasitic, toxic and infectious organisms, the air is hot and heavy. Disease is everywhere, and people die like flies. Leprosy is so prevalent, that the natives often take bizarre measures to avoid contagion. On our visits to the villages we sometimes wander off the trails to find, huddled under a bush, a child living like a beast in the wilderness. Placed there by fearful parents who confuse a minor skin disease with leprosy, these children manage to survive on insects and berries."

Photo is dated 1972.

Photo measures 8 x 10 inches.