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Puerto Rico's Efforts To Stop Zika Are Hampered By Mistrust

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Every time a week goes by, 1,500 more people are reported with Zika in Puerto Rico. That island now counts among the most badly affected parts of the hemisphere. Hundreds of pregnant women are infected, and it is hard to fight the spread of the virus because of mistrust, indifference and competition for attention against other diseases. NPR's Jason Beaubien reports from San Juan.

JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: At a park in the San Jose section of San Juan, Umberto Antonio Guzman is leaning against a chain-link fence watching baseball practice.

(SOUNDBITE OF METAL BAT HITTING BASEBALL)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Speaking Spanish).

BEAUBIEN: Even just after sunset, the tropical air is hot and sticky. The 58-year-old Guzman knows about Zika, and he says he should be worried about it. But this outbreak isn't as bad as when the island got hit by another new tropical disease chikungunya back in 2014.

UMBERTO ANTONIO GUZMAN: (Speaking Spanish).

BEAUBIEN: "The chikungunya," he says, "was very strong, a lot stronger than Zika. And with Zika, many people don't even have any symptoms," he says.

Just a few weeks ago, Guzman's 15-year-old-son, who's out on the field playing third base, had a bad case of dengue. Guzman shrugs and says Zika is just one more health problem here people have to deal with. Puerto Rico had its first Zika case in December of last year. Since then, there have been nearly 9,000 more laboratory-confirmed cases. Health officials say the actual number of people who have gotten it is much higher. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts by the end of the year more than 20 percent of the entire population, or some 700,000 people, could be exposed to Zika.

BRENDA RIVERA GARCIA: Among us scientists, it is scary.

BEAUBIEN: Brenda Rivera Garcia is the state epidemiologist for Puerto Rico. She says this is the first time she's ever seen a mosquito-borne virus that's capable of causing major birth defects. And then, as if that wasn't bad enough, it also turns out to be a sexually transmitted disease.

RIVERA GARCIA: This is something that you would imagine if you were writing science fiction, but it's the reality.

BEAUBIEN: Yet it's difficult to get many people here to pay attention to it.

HIRAM TORRES MONTALVO: Zika is a problem, and we're aware of it. And everybody, of course, they want to keep their families healthy. They don't want them to suffer from this disease.

BEAUBIEN: Hiram Torres Montalvo is a public interest lawyer who has been trying to focus attention on mosquitoes spawning at open landfills. He says, sometimes people here just don't have time to think about Zika.

TORRES MONTALVO: Since we have so many problems in Puerto Rico - our economy's bad. We have a lot of crime, a lot of social issues, public debt, the problem with the government. I think there we're so overwhelmed by all the problems that we have in Puerto Rico, and maybe we don't pay as much attention as we should to the Zika situation.

BEAUBIEN: One thing that did get attention was a plan backed by the CDC for aerial spraying of insecticide to combat the virus. People here were furious. The mayor of San Juan called it environmental terror, and the governor blocked it.

At a neighborhood cleanup of mosquito breeding grounds near the old city of San Juan, Ralph Rivera Gutierrez is helping clear garbage out of a vacant lot. They're carrying several old doors out and tossing them into a municipal dump truck.

RALPH RIVERA GUTIERREZ: We will be working on cleaning up all the places that the community finds that are possible breeding places for the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

BEAUBIEN: Rivera Gutierrez, who's the dean of the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Puerto Rico, says this is an alternative to using insecticides to attack the mosquitoes. He's still irate about the CDC's proposal for aerial spraying.

RIVERA GUTIERREZ: When we hear about these plans and recommendations from the CDC to spray us, then there's a lot of skepticism and a lot if concern. You know, we are of an invaded country. We have been a colony of the United States for 118 years, and there's been a lot of experimentation done on us.

BEAUBIEN: The pesticide that was going to be sprayed, Naled, has been used in Puerto Rico in the past during dengue outbreaks. And Naled is currently being sprayed in Dade County, Fla., to try to address the spread of Zika there. Rivera Gutierrez points out correctly, however, that Naled is no longer approved for use in the European Union. And he says the proposal to spray it in Puerto Rico was an overreaction to the threat of Zika.

RIVERA GUTIERREZ: We don't understand it, except for what might be an economic interest in getting rid of that product.

BEAUBIEN: Amidst the heat, the heavy summer rains and the skepticism here, the Zika virus continues to spread, making people sick and possibly harming hundreds of babies that will be born in the months to come. Jason Beaubien, NPR News, San Juan.