Dr Peter Hotez gestured at three tyres dumped on the weed-ravaged, litter-strewn roadside by a boarded-up house on Worms Street.
To Hotez they were more than an eyesore – they signified a potential health hazard, the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes that could spread the Zika virus.
The World Health Organisation has warned that the virus is spreading “explosively” through the Americas, with one estimate that there could be as many as 4m infections across the continent over the next year.
At a special briefing in Geneva on Thursday, Margaret Chan, the WHO director general warned it was a threat of “alarming proportions”. Hotez, an eminent scientist and researcher who is dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, agrees. “I’m quite convinced it’s going to be all over the Caribbean within the next few weeks. And then, where’s next?” he said. “Where we’re standing here in the Gulf Coast … Pretty much all of the Gulf Coast cities are vulnerable but Houston is the largest.”
It is less than 15 minutes’ drive from Hotez’s office in the world’s biggest medical complex to the Fifth Ward, a historic, mostly African American quarter just north-east of downtown Houston.
When he hears experts assert that Zika is unlikely to spread significantly in the US, his response is: go to the Fifth Ward and look around.
Broken window screens lie discarded a few feet away from the tyres. A block away, more tyres, a sofa, armchairs, drawers and a colorful variety of other household waste were piled in the street.
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