Mexican Health recognize a dangerous outbrake in 2008/A fly, possible vector
By Marco Tulio Culebro Bahena, independent reporter in Mexico City
Special feature for The Independent
México, april 27.- Mexican Health Authorities recognizes a dangerous outbreak that includes 500 strange pneumoniae report cases in December 2008 that attacked the community of La Gloria in mountainous tropical zone of Perote valley, Veracruz state, where an enormous pig breeder is settled, but powerful private interests prevailed over the need of public information. A local fly could be a biological vector.
As occur in the China´s Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrom (SARS) outbreak in early 2003, the Mexican government delays on recognize what it seems to be now the very first signal of the porcine flu outbreak five months ago, which spread has mobilized the global Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response net (EPR) depending on the UN´s World Health Organization (WHO).
Today, in the fifth day of the porcine flu epidemic national alert, when the disease has kill 103 people in Mexico in less than a week and has spread to a lot of countries including nordic peninsula in Europe, mexicans are shocked with the government concealment of vital health information. The number of deaths in the December outbreak is still unknowned.
Almost 500 people were affected by massive pneumonias in Valle del Perote 175 miles at the southeast of Mexico in late 2008, where Granjas Carroll a massive pig breeder has settled since 1994. The victims of the first porcine flu outbreak blame the so bad health´s operation standards of the pig breeder that provoke high biological pollution levels from it´s oxidation lagoon sew at open sky.
Granjas Carroll sew goes directly to an oxidation lagoon in the nearby of La Gloria. The December´s 2008 inquiries take mexican health specialists to thought there could be also a biological vector involved in the massive spread of the disease. The fly common in the lagoon, but the insect vector theory requires a more extensive research.
The company construct more oxidation lagoons in the communities of Quechulá and Xaltepec in the neighbor state of Puebla without ecological membrane where are clouds of flies. Smithfield Foods, the American investor in the mexican-american joint venture Granjas Carroll has been fined in 1996 by the District Court of Norfolk (USA) with 12.6 million dollars for violations on the Federal Clean Water Act. The Mexican investor is Agroindustrias Unidas de Mexico.
Water biological pollution it´s well known in Mexico as a typical consequence of massive pig breeding, as it occurs in La Piedad river, Michoacán state, central Mexico. This river ends in Chapala lake, Jalisco state.
At international level, massive food production without health standards could be blamed as a cause of another epizootia in England 1990´s, known as the Mad Cow disease. Where Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) jumps the inter-species barrier and affected humans by meat ingestion. In that time, researchers determinate there was a prion, a biological particle smaller than a virus, as the cause of mad cow disease. The mad cow disease begins a large food security debate.
Government sources said they do not still localized the cause of the fatal porcine flu epidemia yet, that has kills more than one hundred people and paralyzed one of the biggest cities of the world. On Sunday 26, United States also calls for a national emergency preventing the disease dissemination with around 20 cases in its territory at the moment. The mobilization include Japan, where no cases reported, where health sources of the oriental country said they are looking for an effective vaccine against the N2H2 porcine flu virus.
Mexican ecological NGO, like Planeta Azul has been fighting against Granjas Carroll in Veracruz for almost three years ago, where inhabitants of the zone are affected by diseases, fetid air and clouds of flies. And now, when all humanity are endangered by porcine flu pandemia, international pressure on Mexican government its needed to change the health situation in Veracruz, Michoacán states and elsewhere.
As cheap meat production is part of the government strategic plans on attracting offshoring investment, authorities ignored local ecological activists demands, but only when an official health Canadian alert from an ill tourist back from its trip, mexican government take notice of the new virus. Atlanta´s CDC´s in United States help to identified the virus as H2N2, a so contagious mix of avian, porcine and human virus stock.
On Smithfield Foods fine in USA see
http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/1997/August97/331enr.htm
For local NGO early protests (in Spanish)
http://www.planetaazul.com.mx/www/2009/04/06/granjas-carroll-provoco-la-epidemia-de-males-respiratorios-en-perote-segun-agente-municipal/
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