For Brazil’s rich and poor, a disparate response to Zika

Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO

Two Brazilian women, two pregnancies, one nightmare. But two very different stories.

Regina de Lima and Tainara Lourenco became pregnant at a scary moment – the dawn of an extraordinary Zika outbreak, as authorities came to suspect that the virus was causing an alarming spike in a rare birth defect called microcephaly. Both have reason to fear for the health of their unborn offspring.

But that is where the similarities end.

Lima is well-off, and took advantage of the options of affluence.

Lourenco lives in a slum. She has no options, except to hope for the best.

When Lima learned she was pregnant, her initial, vertiginous rush of happiness was almost immediately smothered by dread.

Lima and her husband had been trying to start a family but decided to put the project on hold in late November, after the Brazilian government announced a possible link between mosquito-borne Zika and microcephaly, in which infants are born with unusually small heads and can sometimes suffer mental retardation or a host of serious health and developmental problems.

The connection between Zika and microcephaly is not yet understood, but the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there is strong evidence of a link. And with more than 3,700 confirmed or suspected cases of microcephaly registered here since October – compared with fewer than 150 cases in all of 2014 – the Brazilian government took the drastic step of urging would-be parents to put off pregnancies.

Lima did what growing numbers of wealthy Brazilian women are doing: She requested an extended vacation from work, packed her bags and left for Europe.

Her airline ticket alone cost several times the monthly minimum wage of just over $200, and with Brazil’s currency at historic lows amid an economic recession, even everyday expenses in Europe have become exorbitant by Brazilian standards.

Unemployed and five months pregnant, 21-year-old Lourenco lives in a slum at the epicenter of Brazil’s tandem Zika and microcephaly outbreaks, the state of Pernambuco in Brazil’s impoverished and underdeveloped northeast.

Her shack is cobbled together from bits of wood and perches on stilts over a giant puddle of fetid water below. To eke out a living for herself and her 2-year-old daughter, Lourenco ventures into a nearby swamp to hunt for crustaceans she hawks for $2.50 a kilogram.

“I think I got Zika or some other disease not long ago,” she said. “What can we do? Just hope that it doesn’t affect the baby.”

Like many of the estimated 400,000 women currently pregnant in Brazil, she can’t afford mosquito repellent. Microcephaly fears have sparked a run on repellents.