How do you tell a community in the US that they don't have running water or electricity?
Crystal Lee goes through a lot of dust on Route 66 past the border town of Gallup, New Mexico, on her way to the Navajo Nation. She is going to see people who have survived the disease.
Lee was aware of someone who had passed from COVID every day.
Lee was an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico College of Population Health and tried to sound the alarm before the Pandemic. She warned at the United Nations that the Navajo Nation did not have the resources to deal with a deadly epidemic.
The death rate per capita in the United States was the highest due to the coronaviruses outbreak in the Navajo Nation.
Lee is the subject of a new documentary short film.
There are only 13 grocery stores on the reservation of the largest nation in the world. You talk about health conditions like chronic diseases and other infectious diseases when you talk about housing overcrowding. It really hit our community hard because of the outbreak of Covid.
The government left all of the tribes out of the first round of funding.
Our Indian Health service system is substandard because we are the last to get discretionary funds at the congressional level.
She took it upon herself to try to help a community that was left with almost no defenses against a deadly epidemic.
Lee said that part of his academic training is infectious disease and preventative medicine, and when the virus first came out, he knew how it was most likely an airborne virus.
She made recommendations to the community to try to stop the spread of airborne COVID-19.
Lee worked hard to deliver masks and disinfection products to about 70 different tribal communities, as well as partnering with another company to start quarantining people in a hotel converted for the purpose.
According to Lee, only one of the thousands of people were affected by the disease.
Lee noticed something else after the quark period ended.
The community members said that the 14-day quark phase was over. I don't have a place to call home. There is no job for me. I don't have anything to eat. A female is a victim of domestic violence. I don't want to go back to my hometown. My kids and I are not safe.
Lee was still providing care. The hotel became a mental health facility. She launched an Indigenous health care company earlier this year to help people suffering from mental and behavioral trauma.
She doesn't forget those who have been lost.
I thought about my uncle who died. I was a part of his life. He was my father's youngest brother. She wiped back tears as she said that they grew up together.
She adjusts her stance.
This is the reason we do it.
The article is part of a special report that was supported by Takeda Pharmaceuticals.
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