Brazil’s Zika fight crippled by corruption and recession
CAMPINA GRANDE, BRAZIL— Last May, as the first cases of Zika were being detected in Brazil, cities at the front lines of the epidemic stopped receiving government shipments of insecticide to kill mosquitoes.
In Campina Grande, a city of 400,000, the shortages continued even after President Dilma Rousseff declared the mosquito-borne virus a health emergency on Nov. 11.
The lack of larvicide is one of a string of public health failings crippling Brazil’s ability to manage the Zika outbreak and the surge in rare birth defects believed linked to it. A weeklong tour by The Associated Press of the impoverished northeast where the epidemic is most severe found public hospitals starved for funding and local officials scrambling to care for the stricken babies.
“In 19 years of working in environmental control I’ve never seen so much disorganization,” said Rossandra Oliveira, who manages mosquito control in Campina Grande.
The immediate culprit is Brazil’s deepest recession since the 1930s. But experts say the collective failure to tackle corruption and crushing inequality is also to blame.
Health Minister Marcelo Castro said shipments have been normalized since he took office last October. “We’ve made a huge effort to ensure that there’s no lack of larvicide in any part of Brazil.”
But documents from prosecutors indicate the shortages were so severe supplies had to be rationed nationwide between August and October.
Castro said the most effective way to fight mosquitoes is eliminating breeding sites lurking inside homes.
But virologists say it’s important to leverage all weapons, including larvicide, which is dropped into makeshift cisterns used because of a lack of reliable running water in some areas.
Instead of looking at past failures, Rousseff has been appealing to national pride. The T-shirt she wore to kick off a nationwide clean-up campaign read, “A mosquito is not stronger than an entire country.”
Still, resources are tight. The Health Ministry lost almost 3 per cent of its budget in cuts last month.
Corruption may also be playing a role. In Paraiba, which with Pernambuco state is Brazil’s Zika ground zero, prosecutors have 96 ongoing investigations into local officials embezzling federal health care funds.
It’s not just Brazil’s long-neglected backwaters struggling. For years, the public health care system has been on life support.
In Recife, a city of 1.6 million, where more than 300 babies with microcephaly are being treated, health secretary Jailson Correia feels frustrated. A pediatrician with a doctorate in infectious diseases, in November he requested $7.5 million in emergency funding . Only $300,000 arrived.
The insult was double when Rousseff visited a few weeks later to inaugurate a highway.
“It’s amazing how a one-centimetre mosquito is unmasking so many of our problems,” Correia said. “I’m not saying a crisis of this proportion is welcome, but perhaps it will finally make us reflect on what kind of society we want to live in.”