Poor Stewardship of the Amazon Rainforest = Dwindling Coffee Crops

"The ecologically destructive way we grow coffee is going to result in us not having coffee."

"Deforestation for coffee cultivation is killing the rains, which is killing the coffee."

Etelle Higonnet, with nonprofit industry watchdog Coffee Watch 

 

"We had some recovery from the frost, but in the last two years we have had a very irregular climate, with dry periods during the rainy season and more rain than usual during the dry season." 

"This irregular weather affects coffee flowering and the growth of coffee beans, having a negative impact on crop volume."

"It’s not as bad as the frost we had in 2021, but it has resulted in lower than expected production."

Marcelo Vieira, Head, Coffee Department, Brazilian Rural Society agriculture group  

The impact of the extreme weather on the Cerrado region in August 2024. Image: Antonio Sergio

 

 According to the latest report from industry watchdog Coffee Watch published last month, the destruction of forests leads to an interruption of the natural weather cycle of rain, leaving long-term prospects of coffee bean harvests in a severely compromised position. The group mapped Brazil's deforestation in its southeastern coffee belt, linking it to changes in rainfall and resulting crop failures. Local forests, destroyed for the land to be given over to plantations, has seen rainfall in those areas decreased, driving lower yields and ultimately crop failures resulting in higher coffee prices for consumers.

 

Should the situation go on, Etelle Higonnet with Coffee Watch, warns that fewer crops will materialize while more forests are destroyed to answer to producers' calls for expanding farmland for coffee crops. Clearing forests to meet the demand for coffee production, according to the report, will exacerbate normal rainfall patterns creating shrinking yields for farmers, since coffee crops are not drought-resilient.

 

The report relied on Brazilian scientists' findings, and saw publication in September in Nature Communications. Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon Rainforest was found responsible for roughly 75 percent of rainfall decreases in the Amazon catchbasin.  According to the data, deforestation affects rainfall and other related growing conditions. Advanced mapping techniques and analytical tools are now used to identify and quantify these deleterious connections. 

 

Lack of rain in Brazil is causing significant stress to coffee trees. Image: Jonas Ferraresso

 

 A European Union law meant to force Brazil and other coffee-producing countries like Vietnam to provide information whether coffee sold in the bloc had been grown on recently deforested land now validates concerns much to the consternation of Brazil and others. As the world's most productive coffee grower, Brazil's concern is focused on cultivation. Once, Brazil's main southeastern growing regions' conditions saw coffee thrive with reliable rains and fertile soil -- now degraded as a result of deforestation.

 

Yet, despite the report's definitive results, forest felling in Brazil is ongoing. A 2014 drought in Brazil was a turning point, when rain shortage spurred the reality of an annual repeat. Condition-sensitive coffee crops have not responded well since then, with rain falling haphazardly, its timing misaligned with growing requirements. Intense drought in 2024 contributed to wild spikes in global coffee prices, reflecting shortages.

 

Recent strides by Brazilian authorities to reduce the pace of deforestation in some areas will fail to have an impact with more severe pricing crises that may yet result should annual rain cycles collapse. Much of Brazil's coffee belt will become less reliable and the projection by Coffee Watch is that by 2050 prices could begin to soar. 

 

It is not only coffee growing's future that will be impacted by environmental changes led by deforestation. Cattle ranching and  soy farming expansion are also related to forest felling in Brazil. High demand for major commodities drive deforestation worldwide. Yet in a world concerned with climate change and a pending environmental catastrophe, the role of forests in tempering these changes is vital since forests absorb carbon and aid in the regulation of global climate. 

 

 

 

Drought-damaged coffee trees in Brazil in October 2024. Image: Maria Laura Simoni

 

 

 

In the Name of Environmental Protection

 

"[The Avenida Liberdade, will be 13.3 kilometres long and] will have two lanes of traffic in each direction and shoulders, as well as exclusive lanes for cyclists, ecological paving on the cycle path, and solar-powered lighting."

"[The work is 20 percent complete], the earthmoving stage is underway."

Local regional government

 

"Everything was destroyed."

"Our harvest has already been cut down."

"We no longer have that income to support our family." 

Claudio Verequete, Tree-berries harvester

 

"The city as a whole is being improved, it is being repaired and a lot of people are visiting from other places."

"It means I can sell more and earn more."

"[Belem, once] beautiful, well-kept, well cared for [has of late been] abandoned [and] neglected."

Dalci Cardoso da Silver, leather-shoe stall owner 

A drone view shows the construction of the Avenida Liberdade road ahead of the COP30 climate summit, in Belem, Para state, Brazil, February 4, 2025. REUTERS/Adriano Machado

 

Belem, in Brazil, a city of 1.3 million people, is preparing to host an  upcoming United Nations climate change conference in November. The conference known as the Conference of the Parties, is a hugely popular event for dedicated environmentalists and governments that give it credit for addressing a global emergency, that of Climate Change, which many among them claim is a human-made environmental disaster from the burning of fossil fuels.

 

Such COP events draw well over 50,000 attendees comprised of the presence of world leaders, their entourages, and any number of global environmental groups. For Brazil, as for many other host countries in the past and presumably the future, the events draw tourists and the movement of people accordingly represents a huge cash crop resulting from accommodation, food services, and accompanying tourism benefits.

For the first time, the UN annual summit COP30 will be held in the Amazon, in the city of Belém. (Photo: Rafa Neddermeyer/COP30 Amazônia/PR)

Belem is known as the gateway to the Amazon River. It has invested hugely in building a new central square, including a metal walkway with a lookout, kiosks, rain gardens, a picnic area, an event space, a pet space, a playground and an outdoor gym. The better to genially accommodate the hordes arriving to take part in the COP30 conference, and the invariably anticipated tourism that follows such celebrated events.

 

Such an event that has great potential for morphing into a popular venue drawing tourist dollars and associated employment opportunities for locals. And the government of Brazil viewed it as a necessary expenditure to invest in upgrading access. To do so it is building a four-lane highway to cut through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest. Its effect is meant to ease traffic to Belem.

 

Improvements to Belem's rainwater drainage system and sewage network, a cycle path and a clean energy system are all also in the planning stages. Hana Tuma, vice-governor of the area, enthuses that the Avenida Liberdade highway is "a dream, a new exit to Belem, a transformation in our capital and metropolitan region."

 

Adler Silveira, the state government's infrastructure secretary, spoke of the highway as an "important mobility intervention", a "sustainable highway". This, for a highway that will cut through the Metropolitan Belem Environmental Protection Area, created in 1993. Nonetheless, construction is taking place within the boundaries of the protected area. 

A drone view shows the construction of the Avenida Liberdade road ahead of the COP30 climate summit, in Belem, Para state, Brazil, February 4, 2025. REUTERS/Adriano Machado

"[In the area], earthmoving, mining, dredging and excavation activities that may cause damage or degradation of the environment and/or danger to people or the environment are not permitted, nor are any industrial activity potentially capable of causing pollution, according to State Decree 1,551/1993."

Metropolitan Belem Environmental Protection Area, government document

Natural Solution for a Natural Plague

"We were able to show this component of snake venom was able to inhibit a very important protein from the virus."

"A component of the venom demonstrated in this study is that it has development potential. It's a long road, we have taken the first steps."

"Is this an important discovery? Without a doubt it is, but chasing after the animal is not how it will be resolved."

"The component that was discovered is just a fraction from inside the venom, it is not the venom itself that will cure coronavirus at this time."

Rafael Guido,professor, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil

"We're wary about people going out to hunt the jararacussu around Brazil, thinking they're going to save the world."

"That's not it! It's not the venom itself that will cure the coronavirus."

Giuseppe Puorto, herpetologist, Butantan Institute biological collection, Sao Paulo

A researcher works on a sample inside a laboratory at the University of Sao Paulo's Institute of Physics for a study in which the institute claims to have discovered a 75% drop in the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) production after cells came into contact with jararacussu snake venom, in Sao Carlos, Brazil August 30, 2021. Picture taken August 30, 2021. REUTERS/Carla Carniel

A breakthrough study published in the scientific journal Molecules by Brazilian researchers establishes that a molecule in the venom of a viper native to Brazil succeeded in inhibiting reproduction of the coronavirus in monkey cells. This is a start toward producing a potential initial step in the drive to discover a drug capable of combating the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. 

 

The finding was that the molecule produced by the jararacussu pit viper was able to inhibit virus multiplication in monkey cells, by 75 percent.

 

The jararacussu pit viper is one of the largest snakes in Brazil, measuring up to 6 feet  (Mark Kostich/iStock)

 

 Without doing harm to other cells -- the molecule, a peptide or chain of amino acids -- was found to be  capable of connecting to an enzyme of the coronavirus called PLPro, vital to reproduction of the virus. The peptide, known for its antibacterial qualities, can be laboratory synthesized. That being the case there is no need to harvest the animals themselves, capturing them to extract the peptide in the venom, or alternately raising the snakes for venom extraction. 

The follow-up stage is the evaluation by researchers to determine the efficiency of different doses of the molecule; and whether it may prevent the virus from entering cells to begin with, according to a statement from the State University of Sao Paulo (UNESP), involved in the research.

Should everything proceed as anticipated, the researchers look forward to testing the substance in human cells eventually.

 

Image: AP

The Other Brazilians

Carl Court/Getty Images

"They have all they need out there."

"There are birds to hunt, and they have other food. There are seeds and insects and snakes they can eat."

Miguel Campos, 61, Brazilian boatman, Mangaratiba, Brazil

"I couldn't leave the cats out there in such a situation."

"I agreed to go the same hour [when she was shown a video from the island; Cat Alcatraz]."

Amelia Oliveira, Brazilian veterinarian

"It's terrible."

"Are we going to let the animals die of hunter, or are we going to keep on giving food, which will only incentivize more abandonment?"

Fernanda Porto, environmental sub-secretary, Mangaratiba, Brazil

Mangaratiba, Brazil

It is an island, uninhabited but for the cats that have been left there to fend for themselves over the years. The official name for the island is now Ilha Furtada. In popular nomenclature everyone refers to it as Ilha dos Gatos: Island of the Cats. It isn't known how the cats first appeared on the island. In the city of Mangaratiba, close by, officials say a family had attempted to make a life for themselves on the island decades earlier, but abandoned their plans and left behind a pair of cats. 

 

Boatmen have a different story, that there was once a restaurant on the island in a tourist area that closed, with the owners abandoning their cats to the island. It is one small island among many, on a island-hopping-tourism route, though not many have a wish to visit the island. It has no beaches, and large spiders are to be found there. And cats, hundreds and hundreds of cats, though the true numbers are not known. There is no source of fresh water on the island.

 

Locals had made it a habit to bring food to the cats. Animal lovers have defied the city asking people to stop feeding the cats, that it only encourages further abandonment. There is nothing on the island for the cats to eat. Most have become feral, many have been born on the island, and have no familiarity with humans, but among them are domesticated cats who were once someone's pet, and now roam the island just like the original abandoned cats. 

 

AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo    Cats live on Furtada Island, popularly known as “Island of the Cats,” in Mangaratiba, Brazil

 

This long-standing problem of abandoned cats prowling a small island with no source of food or water has grown even more problematic over the past two years. Brazil is well known to have suffered greatly from the global pandemic. After India and the United States, it has the largest toll from COVID-19-related deaths. Over 465,000 people have died. With their deaths pets have found themselves without a home. Other Brazilians suffering from the economic downturn finding themselves impoverished without adequate sustenance for themselves, are no longer able to look after their pets.

Not only has Brazil been devastated by the coronavirus, its hospitals reeling from the stress of trying to cope with countless patients seriously ill from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, that other devastation -- of the country's pets left without care and affection and homes become homeless, wandering city streets desperately trying to adapt to scavenging for food and security. Shelters are unable to cope with the influx of abandoned pets.

The shelter located closest to the Island of the Cats has seen people arrive with car loads of cats, too many to take in all at once. When they decline they are informed "If you don't take them, they're going out to Island of the Cats". And this is precisely where they end up. People drop them off on the island or pay a boatman to make the trip, the last stop for unwanted cats who must learn to survive on their own and somehow manage to, aided by the food and water left by visitors. Some die.

 

 

 

Amelia Oliveira, a veterinarian who made it her business to travel around Brazil to care for animals found the island swarming with cats, some of which came toward her purring, and others who were totally feral avoiding her altogether. She has taken some of the friendly cats off the island preparing them for adoption; capturing and neutering others. Her organization has managed in the past ten years, to neuter 380 of the island's cats. "The cat population was being controlled", she said.

 

Volunteers and groups left food and water, set up small shelters. Local fishermen dropped off part of their catch. And then the pandemic hit and the delicate balance went off kilter as the cats swiftly increased in number. And those who had once fed the cats stopped leaving food and water when restrictions resulting from COVID were brought into law. The nearby city of Mangaratiba found itself with a larger problem needing a solution. 

 

The cat haven was nothing of the kind. It was a cruel solution to people no longer wanting to or able to care for their cats abandoning them to their own devices, live or die. People left jugs on the island to catch rain water. Cat food feeders were left there to be refilled on occasion. And cat-sized 'houses' dotted the island close to the water. Huge spider webs were strung out over everything. When people arrived the cats would congregate awaiting food, then slip back into the forest. 

 

Cat Island remains a problem, a blot on society -- awaiting a solution.

AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo    Cats rest in the sun on Furtada Island, popularly known as “Island of the Cats,” in Mangaratiba, Brazil. 

 

C-Section Party-Time, Brazil

The Washington Post

"It's cultural. Brazilians want to plan for everything. They don't want to hit traffic on the way to the
 hospital."
"They want to get their nails done, get a wax, to play it like an event."
Marcia da Costa, director, Sao Luiz Hospital, Sao Paulo

"We saw that we had to re-evaluate these percentages and make sure that birth decisions were being geared toward the health of the mother and  the child, and not for convenience."
"Here we had the opposite statistics [to the WHO estimate that ten percent of births require a C-section."
Rodrigo Agular, director, National Supplementary Health Agency, Brazil

"C-sections today are much safer than they were thirty years ago."
"Things are changing. Women are in the job market. Couples are trying to schedule a moment when the family can get together."
"[Caesarean sections fit some lifestyles]."
Olimpio de Moraes Filho, president, Brazilian Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecology

"The mom has just given birth, she is learning to breastfeed, she doesn't want to entertain at home."
"So while she's getting ready for the birth, we are getting ready to host."
Paula Ascar Baracat, co-founder, Estudio Matre

"It [a natural birth] doesn't fit with our lifestyle. I'm a doctor, and my husband is, too. We have a very planned life and had to take vacation for the baby to be born."
"I love it [her hospital room, decorated in blue and white balloons, refrigerator stocked with rum-barrel-aged beer, her luxury suite lined with succulent plants, parting gifts for the 80 guests she expects]. To be surrounded by the people you love [as you give birth by C-section], people who saw you grow up, is extraordinary."
Bruna Viera, 32, Albert Einstein Maternity Hospital, Sao Paulo

Albert Einstein must be chuckling at yet another manifestation of human absurdity. True, he was absorbed with abstract, abstruse suppositions relating to physics, the cosmos, but his dry, amused comments on humanity and and peoples' proclivity toward extremes and the absurd were beyond entertaining, infused with wisdom and tolerance. Childbirth, the most natural experience a woman can have, the process nature designed females to undergo in the interests of natural increase of any population, is fairly straightforward.

In this busy-busy, distracted modern world of ours, patience is at a premium. People want things they anticipate to occur when they want them to; natural processes be damned. When a woman is in labour in hospital, her gynecologist is likely a very busy man, and he will, if it hasn't already happened on its own, break a woman's waters to speed labour and delivery. Women have taken to a more extreme level of management, opting for Caesarean Section over natural delivery in a bid to 'save time'.

Women appear increasingly in North America to look upon a C-section delivery as convenient and desirable. Gone are the days when such invasive surgery was looked upon with dread, a misfortune, a procedure undertaken to save a baby's life because a natural delivery was unfeasible, the baby's position in the uterus awkward and dangerous, delivery potentially hazardous. Instead of delivering vaginally, as nature has intended, a surgeon slits open a woman's abdomen and uterus to extract the fetus.

C-sections are 'legitimate' in the sense of being medically required in but ten percent of pregnancies. They are more expensive procedures to undertake than natural childbirth. At one time, the chance of death through C-section for both mother and child loomed dangerously; that danger has been dramatically reduced with modern techniques and well-equipped hospitals. Even so, hemorrhage and infection is more likely to occur in an elective Caesarean than as a result of a natural birth process.

C-sections are linked to higher rates of respiratory distress, diabetes and the potential for high-blood-pressure for babies delivered by C-section. When the choice is made for a premature C-section related to some event that corresponds in time with the event, and the procedure is carried through prematurely in the fetal development stage, the chance of respiratory problems for the baby and prolonged hospital stays for mothers and babies is more likely.

The government of Brazil does not view the new cultural normalcy around C-sections in a positive light, the Health Ministry attempts to reduce the Caesarean "epidemic" by persuasion if possible, through legislation if not, with the government banning medically unnecessary C-sections in 2015, before 39 weeks' gestation. In the past, Brazil's public health system saw the health community lacking resources to monitor women through hours of labour.

In those situations C-section meant medical staff could monitor mothers for a shorter time period. At private hospitals, mothers began to favour C-sections. At private hospitals it has become routine for a pregnant woman in labour to have her hair and makeup looked after in her hospital room. About $500 as a daily fee allows a family to rent the presidential suite, with living room and bathroom to accommodate guests, along with a balcony and mini-bar.

A frosted window looking into the operating room at the Albert Einstein Maternity Hospital turns transparent during surgery, so guests may view the drama inherent in the moment of birth. Clients of businesses specializing in C-section parties taking place in private hospitals pay up to $10,000 for floral arrangements, guest books, monogrammed sheets, personalized water bottles, and silver-plated guest favours.

Mothers in Brazil have been opting to schedule their child’s birth rather than wait for it to occur naturally so much that the Health Ministry was forced to step in to try an quell the “epidemic." (iStock)

Director of the maternity ward at Einstein Hospital in 2015 conferenced with doctors, doulas, midwives, feminist activists and government officials in a discussion of possible methods that could result in an increase in the number of natural births at private hospitals in Brazil. The Appropriate Birth Project was launched in a partnership with 35 hospitals pledged to prioritize natural births over C-section deliveries.

They began by offering the same luxuries and party favours to natural births deliveries as is done with C-sections. Five new natural-birth centres with private showers and tubs were opened at the Einstein hospital. At Sao Luiz, those opting for natural births may select colours of lighting arrangements with their in-room whirlpool bathtubs. Ceiling Fairy lights can be blue or red, reflecting patient mood, with all rooms equipped with MP3 players patients can load with personal playlists.

In four years, the rate of natural births at Einstein increased close to 50 percent from 18 percent. Now, over 200 hospitals have adopted the same program.

"The changes have to be concurrent for everyone: women, their families, their workplace, doctors, nurses."
"When the husband comes in and says, 'I'm working, I need to know the date of the birth' -- it's about learning to plan for the unplannable."
Linus Pauling Fascina, director, maternity ward, Einstein Hospital

iStock

Another 'Biological Wonder'

"After 20 minutes, we were still driving through these [large mounds located in northern Brazil], and I started saying, 'Well, what are they'?"
"As humans, we have never built a city that big, anywhere."
"These termites live on dead leaves, and they get to feed once a year."
"The first time I was there, it's just unbelievable. You just cannot believe what you're looking at. What's strange is they're really regularly spaced, as if there was a grand plan."
"They're actually the oldest living structures … made by insects and actually still occupied today, around about 4,000 years."
"These mounds were formed by a single termite species that excavated a massive network of tunnels to allow them to access dead leaves to eat safely and directly from the forest floor."
"It's incredible that, in this day and age, you can find an 'unknown' biological wonder of this sheer size and age still existing, with the occupants still present." 
Stephen J. Martin, entomologist, University of Salford, Britain

Murundus (termite mounds) in Brazil    Roy Funch

"[When termites build], the individual termite receives little signals from the other termites."
"It puts a ball of dirt down, and then when 100 million other balls of dirt are down, you suddenly have a mound."
"There are lots of different kinds of termite mounds. Some of them actually keep the termites cool during the day, and a little bit warmer at night."
"There's a lot to love about the termites, I think."
Lisa Margonell, science journalist

"This is apparently the world's most extensive bioengineering effort by a single insect species." "Perhaps most exciting of all -- the mounds are extremely old -- up to 4,000 years, similar to the ages of the pyramids."
"[They’re just amorphous lumps of soil, with no internal structures. Nothing lives inside them. Instead], they’re just slag piles."
"It used to be all green and brown, but around eight years ago, Google Earth sharpened their [satellite] images, and I could see the mounds that I had known from the ground."
"There’s no doubt that they’re termite-made. I’ve seen termites building the mounds with my own eyes. There’s no engineering involved. They’re just throwing the stuff out."
Roy Funch, ecologist, Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana, Brazil

A termite queen, left, and a termite king are displayed at the Chongqing Termite Control Institute, on May 16, 2007 in Chongqing Municipality, China. (China Photos/Getty Images)

They looked like huge mounds of dirt, as though a large construction project had left them there after something like a new highway had just been completed. But these mounds were located in a very remote area and clearly no large construction projects undertaken by human agency had taken place there. Dr. Martin's companions, Brazilians, informed him it was their impression the mounds represented hills made by termites, and as such they were indeed waste left over from large and ancient construction projects, but not man-made.

Then Dr. Martin met a Brazilian ecologist, Roy R. Funch, at State University of Feira de Santana who was busy planning to undertake radioactive dating in a bid to date the age of the mounds. Several years of investigation ensued where the two scientists collaborated on studying the peculiar mounds, each three meters tall, and nine meters wide. They determined that the construction of what they realized from satellite images was 200 million mounds, represented the industry of Syntermes dirus. some of the largest termite species; insects roughly one centimeter in length.

More than 200 million termite mounds have been discovered in Brazil, spread across an area so vast that they are visible from space. (Submitted by Stephen Martin)

Spaced on average about 18 meters distance from one another, the mounds spread out across an area somewhat equal to the geographic size of Britain. Radioactive dating of eleven of those mounds put the youngest at about 690 years and the oldest at least 3,820 years of age; about equal in archaeological terms to the Great Pyramid of Giza, in Egypt.  According to the scientists' calculations the termites would have to excavate 10 cubic kilometers of dirt -- equal in volume to some 4,000 Great Pyramids -- to build those 200 million mounds.

Tunnel networks are excavated below the earth, the dirt carried up along a central tube to the summit of a mound, and discarded there, enlarging the mound, bit by bit over time. The pattern revolving around the equal spacing of the mounds appeared to result from an inherently efficient spacing of 'garbage' dirt piles. The presence of the mounds has not been known to anyone outside the region, since the area is hidden by scrub forest where temperatures reach 38 degrees Celsius and greater for most months of the year.

In that landscape the trees are scorched by heat, where the landscape turns a temporary green following a limited month-long rainy season after which the foliage falls from the trees and the landscape once again reverts to its desolate, blanched appearance. It is those fallen leaves that represent the termites' food source, available for only a short period. Since the termites are so dependent on that source of food, when the forest is cut, while the mounds remain, the termites move elsewhere, deprived of their food source.


The area occupied by the mounds is hot and dry, unsuitable for agrarian purposes, though locals did make an effort to try to grow crops there, and failed. A part of the forest was cleared and it was hoped the ensuing field would be able to bear a crop; to no avail. When the two scientists investigated below the surface they discovered layers of 'galleries' where there was storage room for old leaves, and they could see nurseries where young termites were being nurtured to maturity.

Researcher Stephen Martin, bottom, stands next to a cross-section of one of the massive dirt mounds built by termites in northeastern Brazil. (Submitted by Stephen Martin)

 
 

Zika's Dreadful Toll

"A child might be making those raspberry sounds, but they are not making even the sort of consonant sounds like 'mama, baba, data'."
"Children wouldn't turn to the sound of a rattle or they wouldn't be able to follow an object, which typically a child can do by six to eight weeks of age."
"What we suspect is that because they have experienced so much damage to the brain, that connection of an object being presented and being transmitted to the back of the brain is not happening, so that is a significant cognitive impairment."
Dr. Georgina Peacock, director, division of human development and disability, C.D.C. National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Atlanta, GA, U.S.A.

Baby with microcephaly. Photo: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

"It's heartbreaking. We would expect that these children are going to require enormous amounts of work and require enormous amounts of care."
"These are the worst of our fears [that no amount of treatment will suffice to improve these children's development]."
Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in America

"It's very difficult to manage those children [Zika babies], because they need multiple types of specialists", explained Dr. Ernesto Marques, an infectious disease expert located at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Brazil, to begin with, has limited public health resources, and many of the parents of babies affected by the Zika virus are rural and poor. Vision therapy, glasses and Botox to relax rigid muscles appear promising interventions.

Most Zika babies have vision and hearing problems of a nature sufficiently serious as to interfere with their ability to learn and to develop normally. The first of those babies are now reaching two years of age with the more severely affected among them failing development indexes, an indication they will need special care throughout their lives. Confirmed by the results of a study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in America.

Fifteen of the most disabled children born with disabilities inflicted by the Zika virus leaving them with abnormally small heads -- the condition of microcephaly -- were the subjects of that study. The infants, at 22 months, demonstrated the development expected in babies under six months of age. These severely affected infants were unable to sit  up, chew food, and had acquired no language skills.

Of the total of close to three thousand Zika babies born in Brazil, it is unclear how many will realize outcomes quite so severe as the study's children. Early indications are, however, that there may be hundreds of such babies. "Our results are similar to this study", affirmed Dr. Camila Ventura, head of clinical research at the Altino Ventura Foundation providing physical therapy, vision care and other services in Pernambuco state to its registry of 285 Zika babies.

The study had the cooperation of the Brazilian Ministry of Health and other interested organizations. Children from Paraiba state, the epicenter of the Zika crisis, were evaluated. Originally 278 babies born in Paraiba between October 2015 to the end of January 2016 were studied. For a follow-up evaluation, 122 families agreed to take part. In the end, eight girls and seven boys with a range of symptoms that had seen no improvement since infancy formed the kernel of the study.

All of these children had severely impaired motor skills, meeting the evaluative conditions for a cerebral palsy diagnosis, with one single exception. Most of these infants had seizures and problems sleeping. Among them, eight had been hospitalized, mostly for bronchitis or pneumonia, and nine experienced difficulties eating or swallowing, potentially lethal deficits that could see food stuck in the lungs, or of leaving the children malnourished.

Nearly 3,000 children were born with Zika-caused microcephaly in Brazil alone. Photo credit: EPA/Percio Campos

The Profitability Factor in Obesity

"Everyone here knows that Nestle products are good for you."
"[Look, Muciolon infant cereal's label says it is] packed with calcium and niacin."
Celene de Silva, 29, door-to-door Nestle vendor, Fortaleza, Brazil

"The essence of our program is to reach the poor."
"What makes it work is the personal connection between the vendor and the customer."
Felipe Barbosa, Nestle supervisor

"On one hand, Nestle is a global leader in water and infant formula and a lot of dairy products."
"On the other hand, they are going into the backwoods of Brazil and selling their candy."
Barry Popkin, professor of nutrition, University of North Carolina

"When he was a baby, my son didn't like to eat -- until I started giving him Nestle foods."
"Every time I go to the public health clinic, the line for diabetics is out the door. You'd be hard pressed to find a family here that doesn't have it."
Joana D'arc de Vasconcellos, 53, Nestle vendor, Fortaleza, Brazil

"It's a crisis for our society because we are producing a generation of children with impaired cognitive abilities who will not reach their full potential."
Giuliano Giovanetti, outreach and communications, Center for Nutritional Recovery and Education, Brazil

In 2014, almost 9 percent of children in Brazil were deemed to be obese, representing over a 270 percent increase since 1980, a recent study at the University of Washington revealed. As in North America, parents are busy, and to save time they give their toddlers instant noodles and frozen chicken nuggets, and oh yes, soda to drink instead of the culturally normative rice, beans, salad and grilled meats.

Brazil's traditional eating style has evaporated with the rapid rise of fast food and the wide and eager acceptance of convenience foods.

Nestle had so kindly sponsored a river barge to deliver cartons of milk powder, yogurt, chocolate pudding, cookies and candy to communities in Brazil that are isolated in the Amazon basin. Just because it was difficult for people living in inconvenient places to access convenience foods, avuncular Nestle felt they shouldn't be deprived of the opportunity to treat themselves to the same wonderful grade of food accessible to those living in urban centres.

Nestle no longer operates that river barge delivering tens of thousands of such food preparations. Taken out of service, private boat owners, recognizing a wonderful retail opportunity for themselves have taken up the slack. See what Nestles does for under-served communities? Their initial presence gifts people whose traditional diets are soooo boring with sweet, salty, mouth-watering treats, convincing them they've discovered food heaven; once addicted, private enterprise can take over...



In 2006, the government of Brazil took the initiative to enact food-industry regulations in hopes of curbing obesity and disease with measures included to notify Brazilian consumers through advertising alerts alerting people about quasi foods, and with the intention of installing marketing restrictions to diminish the attraction to highly processed foods and sugary drinks, aiming in particular at products marketed to children.

At public hearings the food industry appeared cooperative. According to health advocates however, corporate lawyers and lobbyists were involved in a multi-pronged campaign to scupper the government's intent. Food industry representatives went so far as to accuse Brazil's health surveillance agency of subverting parental authority; mothers, after all, have the right to determine how and what their children should eat....

Lawsuits were filed by industry groups against the health authority representing chocolate, cocoa and candy companies claiming the proposed regulations would violate constitutional protections of free speech, and that the agency was absent the authority to regulate the food and advertising industries. And then the federal government's premier lawyer, its Attorney General, made common cause with the industry and the regulations were suspended.

Elisângela Ferreira, 36, Luiz da Silva, 42, Lisyane Soares, 39, Cristiane do Nascimento, 34, Carlos Cordeiro, 50, Veronica Cabral, 28, (face hidden), her baby Lidia and daughter Debora, 8, take part in an exercise class for obese people at the nonprofit GRACO on Nov. 17. (Dom Phillips/For The Washington Post)

According to Dirceu Raposo de Mello, a former director of Anvisa, the health surveillance agency for Brazil: "The industry did an end run around the system". Food companies spent $158-million in 2014 as donations to members of the nation's National Congress, according to Transparency International Brazil whose study released last year revealed that over half of the current federal legislators had been favoured with donations from the food industry enabling their election wins.

In 2015 the Supreme Court finally banned such corporate contributions to democracy.

Mrs. da Silva, one of many Nestle's devoted food vendors delivers their comestibles on her sales route to poor households bringing them the packaged foods they have learned to depend upon. One of thousands of such door-to-door vendors whose role in expanding Nestle's reach to a quarter-million homes in far-flung corners of Brazil is herself obese at 100 kilos, with high blood pressure; without doubt owing much to her addiction for fried chicken and Coca-Cola.

She was delivering variety packs of Chandelle pudding, Kit-Kats and Mucilon infant cereal to customers as visibly overweight as she herself, including their children. Nestle representatives claim their products are important in the alleviation of hunger and the provision of vital nutrients, that it has reduced salt, fat and sugar from many of their formulae. "We didn't expect what the impact would be", Sean Westcott, head of food research at Nestle admitted of the obesity-and-disease side effect of processed food becoming more widely available.

Nestle, after all, cannot control peoples' tendency to overeat once they can afford more food. And Nestle has made their products affordable to the poor. In China, South Africa and Latin America. Where food giants lobby governments and attain political influence. Packaged foods sales grew 25 percent worldwide in five years, from 2011 to 2016, said Euromonitor, a market research firm.


As for sales of carbonated soft drinks, Latin American sales have doubled since 2000, exceeding even sales in North America by 2013, reported the World Health Organization. Fast food has almost kept pace, with 30 percent growth worldwide from 2011 to 2016. So the people living in the slums of Fortaleza are fortunate; without access to a supermarket they have packaged food delivered directly to their door via Mrs. da Silva. Representing a campaign that serves 700,000 "low-income consumers each month", according to Nestle's website.

Good global corporate citizens. Low and falling incomes among Brazil's poor and working-class has actually spurred direct sales. How so? Nestle allows customers a full month to pay for whatever they buy and the saleswomen are very aware of when their clients are scheduled to receive their monthly government subsidy given to low-income households. Though Nestle cites 800 products available through its vendors, Mrs. da Silva points out that her clients for the most part are interested in sugar-sweetened products such as Kit-Kats, Nesle Greek Red Berry and Chandelle Pacoca.

As for Mrs. Vasconcellos, she has diabetes and high blood pressure as well, while her 17-year-old daughter weighs in at over 115 kilos, with hypertension and polycystic ovary syndrome, linked to obesity. Others of her relatives have a variety of ailments associated with poor diets, including her mother, two sisters and her husband. And then there's Elaine Pereira dos Santos, 35, mother to two, 9 and 4 years old, both overweight.

The 9-year-old weighs 62 kilos: "I always thought fatter is better when it comes to babies", so she encouraged him to eat at fast-food outlets. She finally realized something was fundamentally wrong, when her son could no longer run as young boys should. "Unlike cancer or other illnesses, this is a disability you can't see", observed Juliana Dellare Calia, a nutritionist at a Sao Paulo nursery where children are enrolled who have dangerously fatty livers, hypertension -- and poorly nourished toddlers unable to walk properly.

One in three children in Brazil are overweight because of processed food. Photograph: Stefano Rellandini/Reuters

csmonitor.com

The fattening of Latin America mirrors a global pattern that has left some 1.5 billion adults overweight. Now, from Mexico to Chile, it's triggering a political response.

Zika Updated

"These babies, most of them or all of them, they're going to live very long lives, you can keep them alive a long time, and they will need assistance from someone 24 hours a day."
"The consequences to the society are huge."
Dr. Ernesto Marques, infectious disease, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Recife, Brazil

Dejailson Arruda and his daughter Luiza, who was born with microcephaly-- Associated Press

The babies born of mothers exposed to the Zika virus are now well over a year old. Brazil had the misfortune to see the catastrophic occurrence of disastrous birth defects in babies with Zika-infected mothers. Some with brain damage profound enough that the future is not yet clearly understood for these babies. It was just over a year ago that the World Health Organization issued their declaration identifying Zika as a global health emergency as the mosquito-borne virus made its way across Latin America.

The dismay experienced by families whose babies were immediately identified after birth with microcephaly when they presented with abnormally small, misshapen heads represented a bleak outlook for those babies and the abilities of their families to cope with what was then, and is still, an unforeseen future. In impoverished areas of northeastern Brazil where the phenomenon was first noted, families struggle to be able to do what they can for these unfortunate babies.

In the process the strain and emotional stress of concern and relentless physical efforts to cope with the unthinkable has strained family relationships and threatened livelihoods when parents had little choice but to leave the workforce for the imperative of caring for these horribly physically and mentally impaired babies. Brazil's high rate of teenage pregnancy led to many girls in their early teens becoming pregnant and bearing Zika babies.

"Congenital Zika syndrome" has caused some of these babies to be threatened with frequent seizures, with problems breathing, trouble in swallowing, weakened muscles and joints, leaving them unable to even lift their heads. They have extreme vision and hearing problems and their mothers must cope with the addition of their infants' fierce irritability; as though the child is aware of its limitations and frustrated by them.

Many of these children have severe neurological development impediments to milestones of development normally anticipated in infants, while theirs more closely resembles that of three-month-old infants even as they pass their year-old birthdays. What must seem particularly horrifying to many parents who felt relieved that their baby was born seemingly normal, is to discover their children being diagnosed as among the recognized new waves of impaired children.

Babies who had all the appearances of normalcy at birth now identified through emerging symptoms as being among the impaired, as their brains fail to develop. "We only know what's easy to see", commented Dr. Vanessa Van der Linden, a neuropediatrician in Recife, one of many devoted physicians and therapists doing their utmost to aid families in their coping agonies at public hospitals and non-profit clinics.

Yet, some children are no longer accepted for therapeutic services when their development is seen to have reached their limits.

Infants display serious dysphagia, swallowing problems that affect older Zika babies when their brains are unable to coordinate ordinary eating skills. For some, despite attempts such as thickening formula, feeding tubes threaded through the nose is required. The unfortunate diagnosis of compromised visual, auditory and motor skills leaving the infant with no head control, an inability to roll over or to sit becomes the dreaded reality.

Brazil's Zika Epidemic

"If she [a pregnant woman] was infected at 18 weeks, you're not going to see anything [abnormalities] at 19 weeks -- time needs to pass before things evolve."
"That's what we've been trying to say to people -- it's not about the head size. It's about brain growth."
"As a rule, children with severe brain damage have shorter lifespans. It depends on the degree of damage."
"That's essentially the conversation that one has to have. If we have absolutely no ultrasound features of concern but evidence of the woman having Zika, we have to be genuine and say, 'it's great that we don't see any abnormalities but we can't tell what future time will show."
Dr. Deborah Money, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology, exec. vice-dean, faculty of medicine, University of British Columbia

Photo: VANDERLEI ALMEIDA/AFP/Getty Images.

"It was crazy. The population of mosquitoes [in Rio de Janeiro] is huge."
"For the first time, the Olympic and Para-Olympic Games are being held in a region that is dealing with a viral epidemic. All necessary [protective] measures should be utilized."
Dr. Babak Shadgan, chair, world wrestling federation medical commission, Vancouver

Photo: VANDERLEI ALMEIDA/AFP/Getty Images.

Dr. Shadgan, in his visit to Rio, discovered that there was nowhere that the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, carriers of the Zika virus, aren't present, indoors as well as outdoors, in overwhelming numbers. He and an American colleague wrote a position paper published in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine, urging all national sport teams to do as the South Koreans are preparing their athletes for, to ensure optimal safety during the games.

To design and produce sport wear with fabric impregnated with insect repellent, to consider covering arms and legs with specially designed outfits. This is the first Olympics ever where international public health experts advocated cancelling the Games because of the Zika outbreak. Their argument is that the epidemic cannot be contained; the half-million international attendees could carry the virus back with them from Rio to their homes around the world.

And the organizing committee of the Olympics has, for the first time in its history, licensed an official supplier of mosquito repellent, to be provided at no cost to all competitors. Those who might become infected may have no symptoms whatever and slough off the infection, while others have the potential to be dreadfully affected by it.

Not only does the virus cause microcephaly, the birth defect that leaves babies with abnormally small heads and developmental problems; it is also responsible for increasing the risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome, causing partial paralysis. But it is the dire effects on newborns that concern most health scientists. It is one thing to monitor women who have been exposed either during or before pregnancy, but there are complicating factors.

In Canada, there have been 137 confirmed cases of Zika, 79 of whom are female. Those who are pregnant are monitored with regular ultrasounds checking for skull abnormalities. But if a woman has been exposed well into her pregnancy that detection of something gone awry could occur when she is well advanced in her pregnancy.

Photo: VANDERLEI ALMEIDA/AFP/Getty Images.

Therein lies another dilemma, the choice of late-term abortion to allay fears of possible brain damage. And then again, even if a foetus's skull is determined to appear normal in an ultrasound, brain damage might still have occurred, so how to respond? There is, it appears, "no defined gestational age" when micocephaly can be considered to be no longer a threat, as far as the Public Health Agency of Canada's scientists can see.

Researchers studied 602 liveborn babies with definite or probable Zika in Brazil, to discover one in five had a head circumference within what is considered to be normal range. Zika brain damage can occur outside the physical reality of microcephaly. The journal The Lancet published the study confirming that Zika brain damage can occur in babies whose heads are a normal size and configuration.

If and when brain damage occurs, it ranges from visual or hearing abnormalities to "very, very severe brain growth restriction", along with conditions such as cerebral palsy, said Dr. Money. That Zika can be hidden throughout most of a pregnancy does occur, where months pass before there are any detectable symptoms of abnormal skull or brain growth, revealed by ultrasound.

And while it's all very well to avoid travelling to geographies where the mosquitoes abound and the virus has become epidemic, a growing number of cases have surfaced indicating that transmission has taken place through sexual congress.

Dire Needs Opposing National Law

"They come to my office and ask, 'Is there a chance for my baby to have microcephaly?' We need to inform them there is."
"Later, both patients [who had tested positive for Zika] told me they had abortions."
Dr. Artur Timerman, Sao Paulo

"Some children with severe-appearing brain malformations seem to be relatively unaffected. Yet others with relatively minor structural problems may have profound disabilities."
Dr. Hanna M. Tully, neurologist, Seattle Children's Hospital

"[With any child whose head measures] three or four standard deviations below the mean, then it's very unlikely that you will be dealing with normal intelligence."
Dr. Constantine A. Stratakis, pediatric geneticist, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Maryland

Mosquitoes will be sterilised with gamma rays and then released to disrupt the breeding cycle as part of Brazil’s fight against the Zika virus. Photograph: Marvin Recinos/AFP/Getty Images

"We have an epidemic, an emergency, and the public health sector is not properly caring for women's rights."
"We have constitutional rights at risk, the right to health care and human dignity."
Debora Diniz, anthropologist/researcher, Brazil

Three-month-old Alice Vitoria, who has microcephaly, is held by her mother, Nadja Cristina, at their home in Recife

Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

In Brazil, a woman seeking medical attention at a hospital because of a botched abortion, was handcuffed to a hospital bed and arrested. Scholars in Brazil estimate that up to 850,000 abortions are illegally performed annually in their country. The sturdily Roman Catholic country does not permit abortions with singular exceptions; in the case of rape or anencephaly where parts of the brain or skull are absent, or when the mother's life may be in danger.

Even so, conservatives are attempting to impose greater strictures on abortion to bring them in line with El Salvador which disallows abortion under any circumstances.

A complication arises with requests for abortion related to fears of microcephaly; while absolute scientific evidence of Zika causing the dread malformation in babies is yet absent, even though scientists are convinced that link is there, microcephaly is detectable through ultrasound scans around the end of the second trimester. At 24 weeks, raising objections from supporters of the existing abortion laws in Brazil who argue that late term abortions are forbidden, by church and by state.

And those women who have undergone testing to determine whether they have been infected by Zika, and who are pregnant, may not by law, seek abortions based on their fear that their child will be born disabled. Unless they are wealthy and have the means to obtain illegal abortions or go abroad for that purpose. In Recife, microcephaly-central in Brazil, abortion rights activists are battling the move to make abortion even more restricted in the country.

On their side, is a judge in central Brazil, Jesseir Coelho de Alcantara, who has publicly announced his intention to permit women to pursue legal abortions if they have been infected by Zika, and fear microcephaly will be the painful outcome. And in Brasilia, legal scholars are working to present a case before the country's highest court promoting permission for pregnant woman to have access to abortions once their foetuses are confirmed with abnormally small heads.

Another complexity in this more than-sufficiently complex challenge for women is the issue that about ten percent of babies with microcephaly appear abnormal but have no mental deficits.

Geovane Silva with his son Gustavo Henrique, who has microcephaly, at the Oswaldo Cruz hospital, Recife

Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters

The situation is an alarming one, not only for Latin America where the Zika virus has spread to other countries, and seems destined not to find barriers to its spread in North America and elsewhere, pharmaceutical companies now see a challenge. "It's easy to do a few quick experiments and demonstrate some very promising kind of diagnostics or even something that might look like a vaccine. But to actually take that and really move it forward takes a huge amount of infrastructure and expertise and money", explained Richard Kuhn, head of biological sciences at Purdue University.


Yet the reality is that fifteen pharmaceutical companies around the world are looking into research for the development of a vaccine, even though it would take years to undergo the rigorous clinical tests to confirm efficacy, once such a vaccine is created.  The disease and its transmission by the Aedes mosquito has gone from the forests of Uganda and Tanzania to Asia, across South America, Central America and the Caribbean. Concerned governments are offering incentives to researchers.

President Obama is prepared to request $1.8-billion in emergency funding of the U.S. Congress. "Nobody was prepared for this. No one has worked on growing the virus, characterizing the virus, or developing an animal model. It takes a few years to get to that point if you start today", said Farshad Guirakhoo, senior vice-president of research and development at GeoVax of Smyrna, Georgia, currently working on a vaccine in collaboration with the  University of Georgia.

"Virology is a very difficult field. There are companies that never really deal with a virus. They can't make good tests", said Sudhir Bhatia, founder of Genekam Biotechnology AG of Germany which has developed a diagnostic kit to detect Zika. Canada's Biocan Diagnostics Inc., Altona Diagnostics of Germany and GenArraytion Inc. of Rockville Maryland are also devoting room in their research laboratories for diagnostic tools and vaccines. Much depends on the outcome.