Aggregated News
Puerto Rico’s first Zika case was confirmed in December, and the island’s governor declared a public health emergency on February 5, making the US territory the new frontline in the hemispheric epidemic. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a quarter of the territory’s 3.5 million citizens will contract the Zika virus within a year, and eventually 80 percent or more will most likely be infected.
Zika could not have landed in Puerto Rico at a worse time. US-based hedge funds have sent the country, and its crumbling health care system, into a tailspin. Thousands of public workers, who would otherwise be combating the virus, have been laid off. Worse still, scientists recently discovered that Aedes aegypti, the species that spreads Zika and other diseases like dengue and chikungunya, has developed virtual immunity to most chemical insecticides.
Puerto Rican health authorities are alarmed. The island’s health secretary, Dr Ana Ríus, has advised women to delay pregnancy until the epidemic is over, and the government has frozen the price of condoms, insect repellant, and window screens. We...