Zika epidemic spreads across US colony of Puerto Rico

BY SETH GALINSKY

Despite knowing at least six months ago that the U.S. colony of Puerto Rico was at risk of a Zika epidemic, the colonial regime on the island and the U.S. government took few measures to eliminate the mosquitoes that spread the disease.

The outbreak, the Wall Street Journal reported June 8, gives U.S. and Puerto Rican health authorities “a rare chance to better understand the disease.” U.S. Centers for Disease Control official Steve Waterman told the paper that “we’re going to be generating some good information.”

Two months later, President Barack Obama in a video admonished the people of Puerto Rico to use mosquito repellent and eliminate standing water in their homes, but announced no actions to combat Zika’s spread. Puerto Rican Gov. Alejandro García Padilla thanked Obama for calling on Puerto Ricans to “carry out their individual responsibility.”

By Aug. 6 there were 8,776 people confirmed with Zika infections on the island, including 901 pregnant women. Twenty-seven people have Zika-related Guillain-Barré syndrome, which can cause paralysis. The greatest danger is the risk of birth defects in children whose mothers are infected during pregnancy.

“The way they treat us — because of our situation as a U.S. colony — is infuriating,” Gerson Guzmán, president of General Workers Union Local 1199, told the Militant by phone Aug. 5. Dealing with this “is not an individual problem,” he said. “It can only be solved collectively.”

To pay the $70 billion debt to bondholders, the colonial government over the last several years has laid off thousands of workers, “including those who fumigated in the communities,” Guzmán said.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito that carries Zika prefers to live near people and bite indoors and doesn’t travel far from its breeding spots. The same species spreads dengue, Chikungunya and yellow fever. Zika can also be transmitted through sexual contact.

One of the government’s few actions has been moving 1.6 million tires that could hold standing water away from residential areas. Puerto Rico imports millions of used tires, because many residents can’t afford new ones.

“But there are mountains of discarded tires and thousands more pile up every day,” said retired health worker Luis Epardo by phone from Aguadilla. “Used tires wear out quickly. We’re the dumping ground of the United States.”

And with tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans emigrating every year, a result of the island’s economic crisis exacerbated by its colonial status, thousands of houses are vacant — prime mosquito-breeding real estate.

“When a car won’t start, the first thing you check is the battery,” Ramón Figueroa, a retired Bacardi Rum worker, said from Aguadilla. “To fight Zika the first thing you have to do is eliminate the breeding grounds. But the government has no plans.”

When the García government announced in July that it was going to carry out aerial fumigation with the pesticide naled, a coalition of union, community and religious groups organized several protests. García backed down and returned the naled to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which had sent the chemical without even asking the island’s government if they wanted it.

“The aerial spraying would not only be ineffective, because this type of mosquito lives indoors, it would create more problems,” Pedro Irene Maymi, president of the Puerto Rican Workers’ Federation (CPT), said by phone Aug. 7. “It would kill bees and sea life, harming agriculture on the island. The cure could cause more damage than the disease.”

Union leaders proposed the government form “brigades of public workers” to go block by block to eliminate breeding grounds and to educate people on how to stamp out the mosquitoes.

The response of Gov. García to the union proposal? “He has not answered us,” Maymi said.

Cuba virtually eliminates Zika

Many in Puerto Rico have heard how revolutionary Cuba has fought Zika. An article in the July 6 El Nuevo Día noted that by going house to house, fumigating and eliminating breeding spots, Cuba has almost wiped out not only Zika, but dengue and Chikungunya. But the article makes the Cuban effort sound like a police action, rather than the revolutionary effort it has been. Tens of thousands of volunteers, including medical students, community organizations and others, have carried out the successful campaign along with soldiers, educating the population as they go.

In Brazil, where thousands of pregnant women were infected, more than 1,700 babies were born with microcephaly — an abnormally small head.

“But it’s a mistake to focus just on microcephaly,” Dr. Alberto de la Vega, head of the high-risk pregnancy unit at San Juan’s University Hospital, told the Militant by phone Aug. 6. The hospital is treating 150 Zika-infected pregnant women.

“We already have twice the normal percentage of delayed growth in the fetuses of the women we are treating, more than 20 cases,” he said. “And many Zika-related problems can’t be detected until after birth, such as retinal damage and lesions.”

“There is a lot of distrust of the government and many people don’t believe anything it says,” de la Vega said about the government’s campaign to encourage using mosquito repellent and wearing long sleeves.

De la Vega is concerned that the worst is yet to come. Forty more pregnant women are infected every day, he said, most of whom won’t start giving birth until October.

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