Photo of the Day: Brazil's HMO for Indigenous Peoples


Brazil's twice-a-year Expedicionarios da Saude (Expeditions of Health) see volunteer doctors and laborers fan out through the country's remotest regions to build temporary hosptials and serve local tribal people who have no concept of what health insurance means.

A man from Brazil&39;s indigenous Kayapo tribe, unencumbered by any state- or corporate-issued insurance card, wears a pair of sunglasses after a cataract surgery. (Photo: Ricardo Moraes/Reuters)

Depite extensive logging and exploration for mineral extractions, South America still contains huge swathes of jungle where civilization is in its prehistoric stages. Naturally, inhabitants of these regions, strangers to modernity and its miracles, are prime candidates for medical intervention. And that candidacy is something they have in common with citizens of the most technologically advanced nations on Earth.

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