One of the world’s best kept bad secrets is the number of indigenous people, especially children, who die every year in Brazil’s Amazon due to a complete lack of even basic healthcare. Duke University grad student Gary Carbell has decided to do his best to raise awareness of this crisis announcing a crowdfunding campaign to film a documentary on the important subject.

While Brazil has experienced more prosperity in recent years, this has hardly carried over to all levels of their society. Experts agree, one area that has not seen much, if any, of these benefits at all is the Brazilian Amazon’s indigenous people. Suffering from a widespread lack of healthcare, a skyrocketing infant and child mortality rate, and other related serious problems, the people of the Amazon’s plight has gone largely unnoticed. Until now. Duke University Graduate Student and filmmaker Gary Carbell has announced the launch of a Kickstarter to fund the creation of his planned film “Better Health Care in the Amazon: A Documentary”, focused on opening eyes on the healthcare crisis in the Amazon and showing people how they can help.

Carbell was inspired to film the documentary after spending three months in Brazil conducting field research for his graduate thesis, which led to his establishing relationships with indigenous people and seeing the life and death issues they face everyday first hand.

“As soon as I finished my first semester of graduate school, studying global health, I really wanted to understand why health inequalities were so common amongst indigenous communities in Brazil,” commented Carbell. “It’s hard for me to just walk away, getting to know that people I care for suffer. I know our documentary will go a long way towards exposing their healthcare tragedy to the world.”

According to Carbell, “Better Health Care in the Amazon: A Documentary” hopes to tell this story from three important perspectives; the indigenous person as a patient in a national system, the government health worker trying desperately to help, and the humanitarians investing their time and resources to make a difference.

The Kickstarter campaign has set a goal of $4,024 and ends on June 17, 2015.

For more information be sure to visit www.kickstarter.com or email gjcarbell@gmail.com.