ISLA de León, a slum on the outskirts of Cartagena on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, is a lesson in how to manufacture and transmit the mosquito-borne Zika virus. Ramshackle hovels with dirt floors, crooked wooden walls and zinc roofs line unpaved streets.
In the rainy season, conditions resemble the swamp on which the neighbourhood was built.
"The mosquitoes are a problem, especially at night," says Ingrid Tordecillos, pointing at the pools of green water that flank her houses.
She has suffered from three attacks of Zika. Two of her three children have fallen ill from the virus, which has been linked to birth defects and neurological problems.
On the other side of the continent, Brazil is readying 220,000 members of its armed forces to fight its own battle against Zika, after more than 4,000 cases of microcephaly — babies born with deformed, small heads — were recorded in the past four months.
The emerging pandemic, which has spread to 23 countries in the Americas, could not have come at a worse time for the region.
Reeling from the end of the China-led commodities supercycle, Latin America has been accused of being slow to combat the virus, which the World Health Organisation warned this week could affect as many as 4-million people in the Americas.
In Brazil, the worst-hit country, critics say the inability of the authorities to respond quickly by co-ordinating simple measures, such as checking homes for stagnant water, has only further exposed political and economic paralysis.
...
A FEW years ago, Latin America’s biggest economy was considered part of the solution to global financial ills and a model in battling epidemics following its successful 1990s HIV/AIDS programme. But on both counts it is now part of the problem, says Paulo Sotero, director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC.
"Facing a self-imposed economic calamity that reduces funding for healthcare, the country is deploying available resources … but faces difficulties to harness its capacity to respond to a health emergency," he says.
Sotero adds that, "The country has become the epicentre of a problem that could be avoided by the use of basic preventive strategies at the community level, in co-ordination with municipal, state and federal agencies".
Brazil’s defence ministry announced a comprehensive plan only last Wednesday to combat the virus, including the deployment of the army, navy and air force. Other Latin American nations have proved equally helpless in the face of the virus’s rapid spread, resorting to somewhat farcical bans on procreation.
In El Salvador, the government has urged women to delay pregnancy until 2018. In Colombia, which has the second-highest Zika infection rate after Brazil, the health ministry has suggested couples refrain from conception for six months. Jamaica has issued similar advice.
In Latin America, a predominantly Catholic continent where abortion is largely banned and contraception not always available, it is a naive strategy at best, say campaigners.
In Rio de Janeiro, authorities are putting their faith in the weather gods.
In less than 200 days more than a million tourists are expected to descend on the city for the Olympic Games.
While organisers say they have been checking Olympic venues daily for mosquito infestations, they hope the colder and drier weather in August will also help.
"I am worried, not just about the Olympics, but for the city and for Brazil," says Rio’s mayor, Eduardo Paes.
"But the Olympics comes at a time when the weather is drier and not a high-frequency period for mosquitoes."
The Olympics is not just a concern for Rio, but for any country whose citizens travel to the event.
Researchers suspect the Zika virus, first identified in Uganda in 1947, arrived in Brazil two years ago with the influx of tourists for the Soccer World Cup, says Wilson Savino, a researcher at Brazil’s Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.
...
SCIENTISTS have linked Zika and microcephaly, but it is not yet clear that the virus alone is responsible for the surge in birth defects.
Fears have also grown over links with the rare Guillain-Barré syndrome, which can cause paralysis.
"Nobody knows two things still: why (Zika) spread so fast … and why in Brazil there is such an increase in microcephaly," says Savino.
"This is a completely new health issue for the planet — nobody could have expected this," he says.
"The most important thing is not to say that it took too long (to deal with the outbreak) … this is a global health issue and it demands solidarity and co-operation."
© Financial Times Limited 2016
A municipal health worker fumigates a home in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, as part of the city’s effort to prevent the spread of the Zika virus’s vector, the Aedes aegypti mosquito. Latin America has been widely hit. Picture: REUTERS/JORGE CABRERA
ISLA de León, a slum on the outskirts of Cartagena on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, is a lesson in how to manufacture and transmit the mosquito-borne Zika virus. Ramshackle hovels with dirt floors, crooked wooden walls and zinc roofs line unpaved streets.
In the rainy season, conditions resemble the swamp on which the neighbourhood was built.
"The mosquitoes are a problem, especially at night," says Ingrid Tordecillos, pointing at the pools of green water that flank her houses.
She has suffered from three attacks of Zika. Two of her three children have fallen ill from the virus, which has been linked to birth defects and neurological problems.
On the other side of the continent, Brazil is readying 220,000 members of its armed forces to fight its own battle against Zika, after more than 4,000 cases of microcephaly — babies born with deformed, small heads — were recorded in the past four months.
The emerging pandemic, which has spread to 23 countries in the Americas, could not have come at a worse time for the region.
Reeling from the end of the China-led commodities supercycle, Latin America has been accused of being slow to combat the virus, which the World Health Organisation warned this week could affect as many as 4-million people in the Americas.
In Brazil, the worst-hit country, critics say the inability of the authorities to respond quickly by co-ordinating simple measures, such as checking homes for stagnant water, has only further exposed political and economic paralysis.
...
A FEW years ago, Latin America’s biggest economy was considered part of the solution to global financial ills and a model in battling epidemics following its successful 1990s HIV/AIDS programme. But on both counts it is now part of the problem, says Paulo Sotero, director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC.
"Facing a self-imposed economic calamity that reduces funding for healthcare, the country is deploying available resources … but faces difficulties to harness its capacity to respond to a health emergency," he says.
Sotero adds that, "The country has become the epicentre of a problem that could be avoided by the use of basic preventive strategies at the community level, in co-ordination with municipal, state and federal agencies".
Brazil’s defence ministry announced a comprehensive plan only last Wednesday to combat the virus, including the deployment of the army, navy and air force. Other Latin American nations have proved equally helpless in the face of the virus’s rapid spread, resorting to somewhat farcical bans on procreation.
In El Salvador, the government has urged women to delay pregnancy until 2018. In Colombia, which has the second-highest Zika infection rate after Brazil, the health ministry has suggested couples refrain from conception for six months. Jamaica has issued similar advice.
In Latin America, a predominantly Catholic continent where abortion is largely banned and contraception not always available, it is a naive strategy at best, say campaigners.
In Rio de Janeiro, authorities are putting their faith in the weather gods.
In less than 200 days more than a million tourists are expected to descend on the city for the Olympic Games.
While organisers say they have been checking Olympic venues daily for mosquito infestations, they hope the colder and drier weather in August will also help.
"I am worried, not just about the Olympics, but for the city and for Brazil," says Rio’s mayor, Eduardo Paes.
"But the Olympics comes at a time when the weather is drier and not a high-frequency period for mosquitoes."
The Olympics is not just a concern for Rio, but for any country whose citizens travel to the event.
Researchers suspect the Zika virus, first identified in Uganda in 1947, arrived in Brazil two years ago with the influx of tourists for the Soccer World Cup, says Wilson Savino, a researcher at Brazil’s Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.
...
SCIENTISTS have linked Zika and microcephaly, but it is not yet clear that the virus alone is responsible for the surge in birth defects.
Fears have also grown over links with the rare Guillain-Barré syndrome, which can cause paralysis.
"Nobody knows two things still: why (Zika) spread so fast … and why in Brazil there is such an increase in microcephaly," says Savino.
"This is a completely new health issue for the planet — nobody could have expected this," he says.
"The most important thing is not to say that it took too long (to deal with the outbreak) … this is a global health issue and it demands solidarity and co-operation."
© Financial Times Limited 2016
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