Gangs a hurdle in battle against Zika outbreak
CUSCATANCINGO, El Salvador — For health workers battling Zika across much of Central America, the immediate menace is not the mosquitoes that transmit the virus. It’s the gangsters who control the streets, and sometimes threaten their lives.
Armed and well- organized street gangs known as maras exert near- total control over entire neighborhoods, using sentries to track everyone who comes and goes. In some cases, they deny access to health crews they suspect of working with police or a rival gang. Fear of the maras leads many residents to refuse to answer the door or let health workers inside.
In 2014, an emergency medical technician accompanying a fumigation team in greater San Salvador was shot dead by
mara members after they lifted his shirt and, according to local media reports, found he had a tattoo from a rival gang. Similar incidents have played out in neighboring Honduras and in Guatemala, where fumigators are chased by thugs, assaulted or charged a small tax for access.
“The state is absent” in such areas, said Carlos Carcach, a criminologist with the Superior School of Economics and Business in El Salvador. “The state is being replaced by the gang.”
More than 7,000 suspected cases of Zika have been identified in El Salvador, where government officials have advised women to put off pregnancies for two years due to severe birth defects tentatively linked to the virus. The country has also initiated a campaign against the Aedes aegypti mosquito, relying on aggressive fumigation and the removal of standing water and refuse where its larvae can breed.
But El Salvador, a country of just 6 million people, recorded more than 700 murders in January and had a homicide rate of 103 per 100,000 inhabitants last year, believed to be the highest of any country not in open war.
In Guatemala, fumigators planned to go into one Guatemala City neighborhood last week but locals warned it was too dangerous, said Sergio Mendez, fumigation coordinator for the health ministry.