Soal dan Pembahasan TBI (Reading Comprehension) Bagian 1

        How do you stop disease-carrying mosquitoes from multiplying? That’s the question plaguing the Brazilian goverment, which has been sending army soldiers door to door on a mission to fight Zika-the virus suspected of causing microcephaly in infants born to infected mothers. They are giving leaflets saying that people should have to keep your backyard clean from rubbish, said photographer Tomas Munita, who has been documenting Recife, a northeastern state capital with a population of 3,7 million. Any stray items left outside, even a bottle cap, cam collect rainwater and become a breeding groud for the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that are thought to be the main carriers of Zika.

        But in Brazil’s favelas, or poor neighborhoods, Munita says it’s hard to imagine that the goverment’s information campaign will have much effect. It’s almost impossible to control something like that in that kind of place he said. Many houses in the favelas are makeshift shacks of cardboard and discarded sheet metal. With limited access to clean water and garbage collection, trash piles up and collects water, creating a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes.

        The mosquito scourge goes far beyond these tight-packed neighborhoods. Aedes aegypti has been incredibly hard to kill since it arrived in Latin America with the slave trade from Africa. Huge eradication programs in the 1950s stamped out the mosquito in some countries, only to have them surge back in the 1970s and ‘80s. Even the country’s health minister, Marcelo Castro, has been quoted as saying that Brazil is “badly losing the Battle” against mosquitoes, which aren’t just a threat because they could carry Zika. In Recife, Munita says that some people who aren’t pregnant fear catching chikungunya and dengue from mosquitoes more than Zika, since those diseases cause more severe illness.