{"id":13006,"date":"2016-02-01T09:00:55","date_gmt":"2016-02-01T17:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/life-at-zika-epicenter-a-struggle-for-afflicted-family\/"},"modified":"2016-02-01T09:00:55","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T17:00:55","slug":"life-at-zika-epicenter-a-struggle-for-afflicted-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/life-at-zika-epicenter-a-struggle-for-afflicted-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Life at Zika epicenter a struggle for afflicted family"},"content":{"rendered":"

RECIFE, Brazil<\/strong> \u2014 Around the fifth month of her pregnancy, Daniele Ferreira dos Santos fell ill with a high fever and angry red splotches on her skin.<\/p>\n

She soon recovered.<\/p>\n

But weeks later, when she went to the hospital for a prenatal exam, the news was horrific: The baby she was carrying likely had a severe brain injury. When Juan Pedro Campos dos Santos came into the world in December, the circumference of his head was just 26 centimeters, about 20 percent smaller than normal.<\/p>\n

Santos was never diagnosed with Zika, but she blames the virus for her son\u2019s defect and for the terrible toll it has taken on her life. Living in Recife in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, she is at the epicenter of the Zika outbreak, and Pedro\u2019s is among 3,700 confirmed or suspected cases of microcephaly in Brazil that may be connected to the virus, though no link has yet been proven.<\/p>\n

Originally from Africa, Zika spread to Asia and was first registered in Brazil in the middle of last year, spreading like wildfire through the northeast thanks in part to the region\u2019s widespread poverty, equatorial heat and chronic infestations of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which also spreads dengue fever and chikungunya.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the proverbial perfect storm,\u201d said Dr. Albert Ko, a professor of epidemiology with the Yale School of Public Health, adding the region was likely at least one of the initial points of entry for the disease \u2014 which researchers theorize may have been introduced to Brazil by tourists visiting the country during the 2014 World Cup or an international canoeing event the same year.<\/p>\n

The Summer Olympics are due to be held in Rio de Janeiro in August. The games attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may have been one of many introductions, but this is the one that took off,\u201d said Ko. \u201cIn Brazil, infestation rates (of the mosquito) are highest in the northeast because of climactic reasons and socio-economic reasons, so it makes sense that … it really took off there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mosquitoes have long been an inescapable part of the lives of the Santos family and their neighbors in a slum in Recife\u2019s Apipucos neighborhood, where raw sewage flows in ditches, rain water from the frequent downpours in this equatorial city accumulates in fetid puddles, and the shores of a nearby pond are dotted with trash. Each soda bottle, yogurt container and margarine tub provides an ideal breeding ground for Aedes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mosquito is in all Recife. If I didn\u2019t get it here, I got it at the place I work,\u201d said Santos, a receptionist. \u201cWe all know that the risk (of contracting a mosquito-borne illness) is high.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t always this way. Brazil once succeeded in eliminating the Aedes, which is well adapted to humans, lives within people\u2019s homes and can breed in just a bottle cap of stagnant water. Massive eradication efforts in the 1940s and 1950s allowed the country to be declared free of the mosquito in 1958, but over the decades the insect returned, slowly encroaching from neighboring countries and finding fertile breeding ground in Brazil\u2019s sprawling, unplanned cities, with their limited potable water systems and garbage collection.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of irregular water distribution, many people, especially in poorer areas collect water in tanks … creating ideal breeding grounds for the mosquitoes,\u201d said Dr. Ceuci Nunes, an infectologist at the Couto Maia Hospital in the northeastern city of Salvador. \u201cThe same goes with trash, which often goes uncollected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nunes said regional officials\u2019 laissez-faire attitude toward eradication also helped fan the mosquito\u2019s proliferation, which helped lead to record numbers of dengue cases in recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been a lot of carelessness combating the mosquito,\u201d she said, adding that many municipalities simply \u201cfailed to adopt adequate mosquito-fighting measures.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the face of the spiraling public health crisis, President Dilma Rousseff has declared war on Aedes, with the government promising to deploy some 220,000 members of the Armed Forces to go door-to-door to help educate the population about how to prevent the mosquito\u2019s spread.<\/p>\n

Still, officials on the ground in the epicenter of the crisis worry Rousseff\u2019s declaration might be hollow.<\/p>\n

Recife\u2019s health secretary, Jailson Correia, an infectologist, said the city asked the federal government for $ 7 million for Aedes eradication programs back in November, as the link between Zika and microcephaly was emerging. The payout only came in January, he said, and it was only $300,000.<\/p>\n

Area researchers are also exploring whether another type of mosquito endemic to Brazil\u2019s northeast could also be a Zika carrier, and if so, whether it too may somehow lead to microcephaly. The carrier of West Nile virus, the Culex quinquefasciatus mosquito, is up to 20 times more prevalent in the region than Aedes, which could help explain the intensity of the Zika outbreak there.<\/p>\n

If the hypothesis proves true, staunching Zika\u2019s spread could prove more difficult than previously thought, said Constancia Ayres, a researcher with the Fiocruz Institute in Recife.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that\u2019s the case, the problem is more complex. Only a proper sanitation system would help,\u201d she said. \u201cCulex reproduces in dirty waters, unlike Aedes.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the moment, the best way to avoid infection remains avoiding mosquito bites \u2014 a tall order in Recife, where worry over Zika\u2019s effects has sparked widespread runs on mosquito repellents. And in the few spots where it\u2019s still available, frenetic demand has helped push the price for what was already a costly product into the stratosphere. In Recife\u2019s airport, a small bottle was running for $8 \u2014 a fortune in a region where the per capita household income is around $160 per month, according to the IBGE statistics agency.<\/p>\n

The Brazilian government is now pledging to hand out repellent to low-income pregnant women, but the gesture is cold comfort to new mother Santos.<\/p>\n

Asked whether she had any repellent, she just laughed. She has little reason to laugh these days.<\/p>\n

Almost from birth, Pedro cried ceaselessly, as do many babies with microcephaly. He stops only the few hours when he\u2019s asleep. During those precious hours, Santos keeps her fingers close to his chest so he has something of her to grab onto. Without that, he pinches himself awake with his tiny fingers.<\/p>\n

Her husband was annoyed by the baby\u2019s constant fussing, which distracted him from his television show, she said. He was also deeply chagrinned to have a son born imperfectly.<\/p>\n

So a few weeks after Pedro came home, his father left. He took with him the flat-screen TV that was the centerpiece of their tiny home.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Jenny Barchfield reported from Rio de Janeiro. Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RECIFE, Brazil \u2014 Around the fifth month of her pregnancy, Daniele Ferreira dos Santos fell ill with a high fever and angry red splotches on her skin. She soon recovered. But weeks later, when she went to the hospital for a prenatal exam, the news<\/a> was horrific: The baby she was carrying likely had a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":13007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-13006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13006"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=13006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}