No one knows how the H1N1 virus came to infect residents of a remote Mexican village, writes ADAM THOMSON
UNTIL A month ago, the village of La Gloria, in the arid, cactus-filled hills of Mexico’s Sierra Madre, was like any other poor and neglected community in Mexico: life was quiet, even tedious, and the biggest concern was how the harsh climate would affect the bean harvest.
But since Monday, when Mexico’s health minister told the world that the community of 3,000 was home to the earliest known case of swine flu, things have taken a radical turn. Once-sleepy days are now filled with visits by politicians, health officials and international camera crews. This week, even the state beauty queen rolled in to town.
As the virus continues to sweep the globe – the World Health Organisation yesterday said that the number of confirmed cases had risen from 257 to 331, and that 11 countries were now affected – La Gloria is acquiring a celebrity status as swine flu’s “Ground Zero”.
Superficially, the village presents a compelling case. In late March, long before the current outbreak but long after the normal influenza season should have ended, residents of La Gloria began to complain of flu-like symptoms – headache, coughing, fever and, in some cases, even diarrhoea and vomiting.
“It was terrible,” says Enrique Reyes, a 25-year-old farmer.
“Everyone was getting sick. It felt like the plague.” Edgar Hernández, a five-year-old boy, became the first Mexican to test positive for the A/H1N1 virus when a batch of samples taken from the village was sent off to the US and Canada last month.
Many of La Gloria’s residents believe that local pig farms are to blame. Granjas Carroll, a large breeder 50 per cent owned by US-based Smithfield, has 77 pig-breeding and rearing units in the region. Together, they produce about one million animals a year or 10 per cent of Mexico’s pork consumption.
Residents complain the plant has yielded only stench and flies. “The sickness is in the air. We breathe it every day,” says one resident. But there is little – if any – hard evidence to support residents’ complaints. According to José Angel Córdova, Mexico’s health minister, Edgar’s sample was the only one of approximately 30 taken from the village and sent abroad that tested positive for the swine flu virus.
“What the study confirmed is that there were only a couple of cases of type A influenza [the group to which the swine flu strain belongs],” he told reporters.
Mexico’s agricultural inspection officials say there is no swine flu virus among the pig population at Granjas Carroll farms. “There are no infected pigs in the La Gloria region, or anywhere in Mexico,” said Enrique Sánchez Cruz, director of Senasica, the country’s National Sanitation Service.
Farm number 11-38, about 8km (5 miles) from La Gloria and the nearest pig-rearing operation to the celebrity village, looks more like a well-maintained prison than a pig-breeding operation. About 16,000 animals occupy nine long grey barns surrounded by high metal-wire fencing.
All of them are healthy and all have been subjected to a rigorous programme of vaccination, says Roxana Mendoza, Granjas Carroll’s head veterinarian. A visiting inspector from Mexico’s agriculture ministry said: “We’re happy with what we’ve seen.” So how did Edgar, now fully recovered and busy wrestling with his younger brother in a red SpongeBob tracksuit, contract the virus? Some of La Gloria’s residents point out that the community has a high rate of migration, which could have brought the virus from elsewhere. “All of our young people leave,” says Isabel Colula, a middle-aged woman with wind-scalded skin and a humble smile. “The men go to find work in the US and the women go to Mexico City.”
Maria del Carmen Hernández, Edgar’s mother, counters that none of the family left the village in the days leading up to her son’s illness, and that nobody from outside the community went to visit. “We were just here,” she says. “I don’t know where the virus came from, and I don’t think anyone else does, either.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009