In 1991, Mexico achieved a seemingly definitive health milestone: the eradication of the cattle screwworm (Cochliomyia hominivorax). It was a technical and diplomatic victory that secured our northern border and provided security for thousands of ranching families. However, what took decades to build crumbled in just a couple of years. Today, the return of this pest is not only an agricultural crisis; it is a public health emergency that is literally devouring living tissue in both animals and humans.
The figures are chilling. While last June there were only 13 cases of myiasis in humans, the number has exploded to 180 known cases, mainly in the southeastern states. What is most alarming is the speed of the contagion: 25 new patients were confirmed in the last week alone.
As infectious disease specialist Alejandro Macías points out, these cases represent a profound human tragedy. This is not an infection that can be cured with a simple pill; human myiasis is extremely painful and usually requires surgical intervention to manually remove the larvae that feed on living flesh.
Furthermore, Macías points out a golden rule in veterinary epidemiology: for every case detected in a human, there are perhaps a hundred infested animals in the field—livestock, pets, and wildlife—suggesting that the true magnitude of the outbreak is incalculable.
How did we get here? Although climatic and migratory factors have played a role, the root of the disaster lies in the political decisions of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s six-year term. Ideological hubris and electoral expediency prevailed over technical rigor. The dismantling of sanitary inspections was a warning that went unheeded.
In the book Neither Vengeance nor Forgiveness, by Julio Scherer Ibarra and Jorge Fernández Menéndez, the resistance of the then-President to the pleas of the Secretary of Agriculture, Víctor Villalobos, is documented. The president insisted that animal health was an unnecessary “waste of money” and maintained that the diseases were “fabrications” to close markets, while Villalobos warned, with prophetic accuracy, that without these controls, they would block our border with the United States. In the end, this misguided vision of savings ended up costing a fortune.
This budgetary negligence was compounded by a reckless geopolitical decision: opening the borders to Central American cattle without the necessary national security protocols. Under the guise of regional integration and price controls, the filters that prevented the passage of parasites from areas where the screwworm was never eradicated were relaxed. The result is the closure of the US border, which has caused cattle exports to plummet by 80%, generating losses that already exceed $1.4 billion. Added to this are the increased operating costs for producers, who now have to spend millions on surveillance and preventative treatments to keep their herds from being devoured alive.
The road back to animal health security will be arduous. Eradicating the screwworm again, as was achieved in 1991, requires a massive investment that the current government inherits as a bloody debt. It requires reactivating and expanding the production of sterile flies and financing hundreds of flights to disperse them throughout the country. It’s a war effort against a small but immensely dangerous enemy that flies and lays eggs in any open wound.
Mexico is paying the price for having confused austerity with technical blindness. Today, myiasis is not just a skin disease; it is the symptom of a flawed public policy that, in an attempt to save a few pesos on inspections, ended up handing over the country’s health and economy to the flies.
Source: excelsior
