ARGENTINA: Virus Racks “Ecological” Town

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Nov 27 1996 (IPS) - Until recently, El Bolson, a small town in southern Argentina, had always symbolised the natural way of life to Argentines.

Now its name is synonymous with contamination, illness and death, suffering from a collective psychosis which threatens to be far more lethal than the illness which has struck the town.

City-dwellers tired of contamination fled there to make a living selling craft objects, preserves and organic chickens, but a killer virus has put an end to the rural idyll.

The “hantavirus” is transmitted when a person breathes in vapours from the infected excrement, urine and saliva of field rats when in an enclosed space.

The illness manifests itself as fever, tiredness, coughing and vomiting, and the sufferer runs the risk of dying from respiratory problems. 18 cases have been confirmed so far and 10 people have died.

Argentina’s President Carlos Menem visited the area Monday, eating cherries in front of the television cameras, saying rumours had been spread without due knowledge and promising to help the local people.

However, the measures he offered will to little to meet the urgent needs of El Bolson.

The town is found in a mountain area, more than 1,700 km from the capital, Buenos Aires.

Some 20,000 people live in the town, and 70 percent of these make their living from tourism – a sector which is being decimated by the public reaction to the disease.

All the hotel and travel reservations made for the summer season, which should start in December, have been cancelled, and even the community workers – who come each year to visit the poor and supply them with food – announced they would not go this year. Even charity has its limits.

The craftspeople are looking desperately at the immediate future. They said they are already being discriminated against in other regional markets in the south, and that if the tourists do not come to El Bolson they will be unable to sell their work.

The horticulturalists, whose organic produce is always in demand, have been unable to sell their merchandise in the region, and the chicken farmers and jam makers are facing similar problems.

Claudia Camba and her husband have an “ecological” farm in El Bolson, and they are at their wit’s end on what to do with the 3,000 birds they raised this season. No one wants them, even as a present, even though scientists have stated the illness cannot be caught from food.

“For the last two months we have noted that in San Carlos de Bariloche (the most important tourist centre in the south of the country, barely 60 km from El Bolson) they have bought 10 percent less each day,” said Camba.

“We don’t buy food from El Bolson,” read the cards on the doors of several restaurants in Bariloche.

Camba said Menem’s visit, which ended Wednesday, had been purely a press “circus.” For the president came with all his cabinet, spending the nights in a luxury 180 dollar-per-night cabin, but did not make contact with the producers.

“Promising to delay the payment of taxes won’t help us, because if we can’t sell our produce, when the time comes to pay we will already be bankrupt,” he said.

The President’s promise to create 80 new jobs is not enough, as 100 people will be directly or indirectly jobless if even one farm is unable to place its produce.

Doctors at the local hospital, one of whom suffered from the virus and recovered, said they did not have the elements needed to fulfil even the minimal international biosecurity measures for these cases.

Menem promised to extend the drinking water network, invest in schools and gas installations, repair the access road, impose measures for the prevention of forest fires and pay for a publicity campaign to improve consumer confidence in produce from El Bolson.

He admitted one of the plans dreamt up by his cabinet was to buy up produce from the area to feed children in school canteens nationwide.