For 27,000 Puerto Rican residents living in impoverished San Juan communities near the U.S.'s only tropical estuary, Zika exposure could become just another part of life, according to PBS Newshour.
The Martin Pena Channel is a 3.75 mile long tidal channel located within the San Juan Bay National Estuary. Currently, more than 3,000 homes and buildings dump raw sewage into the water of the channel.
While the channel has been treated like a trash dump for years, the problem has likely been exacerbated because the Puerto Rican government is running out of places to put waste. The Environmental Protection Agency has shut down more than 50 landfills on the island because they were not up to the agency's environmental standards. The island has 29 landfills left, eight of which have been ordered by the EPA to close within the next five years.
"When the trash is present it usually attracts insects, rats, and all kinds of vectors and animals that may transmit diseases," Hector Villanueva, MD, medical director at Health Pro-Med, a clinic that offers low-cost and free services to residents along the channel, told PBS Newshour.
According to the CDC, there have been 669 cases of locally acquired Zika in Puerto Rico. Recently, the first Zika-related death in a U.S. resident was reported on the island. On May 13, the U.S. territory's first case of Zika-related microcephaly was announced.
In regards to preventative measures individuals in the community can take to protect themselves from Zika, Dr. Villanueva told PBS Newshour, "The problem is that the community's very poor. So the recommendations are not really affordable to them. Some of them cannot buy the insect repellant. It's also recommended that they should use screens and they should take advantage of the air condition[er]. But those things are not affordable to our community."
Some in the community are advocating for a restoration project to clean up the channel. The estimated cost for such a project is more than $600 million. The project would largely be funded by the Puerto Rican and federal government. Puerto Rico's debt crises is currently estimated at more than $70 billion. President Barack Obama's request for $1.9 billion in federal funding to help fight the spread of Zika in U.S. states and territories has yet to be approved.
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