Many Navajos are skeptical that deer mice carry Hantavirus
by Leslie Linthicum - appearing here by kind permission of the Albuquerque
Journal: 12/19/93.
In the six months since scientists found a name and a cause for the Four
Corners "mystery illness," federal, state and tribal officials have mounted a
massive health education campaign to warn people away from the identified
carrier of the deadly disease - the deer mouse.
The U.S. Public Health Service describes the effort involving hundreds of
employees, thousands of brochures and posters and countless miles driven over
dirt back roads to bring prevention tips and free mousetraps door to door as
one of the quickest and most comprehensive health education campaigns in the
country's history.
But here in Littlewater, where the illness struck most ferociously, and in
other communities scattered across the Navajo reservation, the campaign has
been met with distrust, disbelief and sometimes anger. The reason is simple:
many people don't believe the scientists' basic premise that people died
from an infectious disease carried by mice. And mice, they say, are
creatures to be respected from a distance, not killed in baited traps.
Deer mice have been the target of prevention measures since they were
identified as the carrier of the strain of Hantavirus that swept through the
Four Corners last spring and has killed 27 people to date.
In a box in a corner of the Littlewater chapter house, dozens of plastic bags
containing mousetraps, disposable gloves and disinfectant sit unused. A
presentation to explain the Hantavirus here last month drew only 10 people.
"They're not calling it a disease," says Louise Nez, an employee of the
Navajo tribal government who works with elders in the community. "They say
it's not true that the mouse is the cause of it. If it's the mouse, then
everybody would get sick."
Kee Tapaha, coordinator of the Littlewater chapter, received 300 of the
mousetrap packets to distribute and has been left with more than 100.
At his house in the nearby community of Casamero Lake, Tapaha has two cats
who sometimes kill mice. He picks up the dead rodents and throws them in the
trash can - no bleach, no gloves.
"We live with the mouse," Tapaha says. "We don't bother them and they don't
bother us."
This is the community, 10 miles down dirt roads and more than 20 miles from
Crownpoint, the nearest town, where the Hantavirus struck in its only
cluster. Five people here became ill with the virulent lung disease; two
died.
It was those sudden deaths, a young couple about to be married, that called
scientists' attention to the disease and everyone's attention to these
rolling plains.
With no trading post, no cafe, barely a sign announcing the community meeting
hall, Littlewater is unused to attention from prying journalists or doctors.
And six months after the epidemic, no one is willing to talk of the past.
"This was a bad year," is all chapter vice president Thomas Barbone will say.
"We hope next year will be better."
And some residents here still don't believe the scientists know what caused
the illness.
Chemical warfare agents tested by the U.S. government, radiation from World
War II, the eclipse of the sun or simple fate are more likely causes of the
illness than mice, some people believe.
Disbelief, and the reluctance of many residents to talk about what was a
traumatic episode for Navajos, has left health educators stymied.
"It's really hard to tell them to get rid of the mouse if that's what they're
saying," says Nez, who has been turned away by elders who believe talking
about the illness might cause it to return.
While accidents remain the greatest killer of Navajos, the Navajo Nation and
the Public Health Service have focused unprecedented attention on the
Hantavirus.
The entire 45-person staff of the U.S. Public Health Service's Navajo-area
office has been involved in some aspect of education about the illness. All
130 of the Navajo Nation's community health representatives have spent months
holding meetings and going door to door with prevention tips. And thousands
of brochures and posters and dozens of radio and TV spots have blanketed the
Navajo reservation.
Public Health Service staff have produced education materials in Navajo and
English and have even commissioned a rap song warning of the deer mouse to
appeal to younger Navajos.
Patrick Bohan has coordinated the Public Health Service's campaign from his
office in St. Michael's, Ariz., about a mile from the Navajo Nation capital
of Window Rock.
"I don't know anywhere in the country that has taken on a health education
effort of this size and done it this quickly," Bohan says.
"We have gone to the remote parts of the reservation, which are really the
most remote parts of the United States, and given them the opportunity to
learn about this."
The toughest job has been persuading people they should take complicated
precautions against an illness that has sickened only a couple dozen people
in a nation of more than 200,000 members.
"In some chapters there haven't been any cases, so people don't consider it a
threat," says Bob Bialas, the Public Health Service sanitarian for the Fort
Defiance, Ariz., unit.
In the Gallup-Crownpoint service unit, Hantavirus seminars were ignored, so
health educators took to the back roads.
"We got in a couple of 4-by-4s and we literally started going door to door
and sitting around kitchen tables and answering questions," says sanitarian
Chuck Freeman.
In Dinnehotso, Ariz., near Monument Valley, about 30 administrators, teachers
and staffers gathered in the library recently at a Bureau of Indian Affairs
boarding school to hear about the Hantavirus.
Marita Jones, a health educator for the Navajo Nation, came prepared with
handouts, maps, pictures of deer mice and a videotape, but she wasn't
prepared for the questions and skepticism.
Where did the deer mice get this? Why do they have it all of a sudden?
Exactly how did the people who got sick come in contact with mouse urine?
Are you sure it isn't related to biological warfare agents stored at Fort
Wingate?
Jones smiles and says, "There's a lot of theories people have. The
information we get says it's in the deer mice."
Even though the virus has been identified in rodents, scientists themselves
haven't been able to say where it came from or why it appeared so suddenly
here.
Some Navajos in the audience shudder at Jones' suggestion of burning dead
mice, and nearly everyone groans and laughs at the suggestion of wrapping
mice in two layers of plastic and burying them two feet deep.
There is no precedent in Navajo custom for trapping and killing mice,
although mice and people traditionally have been encouraged to stay apart.
Nancy Bill helped develop educational materials for the Public Health
Service, and her brother, epidemiologist Dr. Ben Muneta, was instrumental in
linking scientists' precautions regarding mice to Navajo tradition that warns
that humans and mice should live in separate worlds.
Precautions recommended by the federal Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention and the Public Health Service, including keeping food covered and
houses secured against rodent invasions, are similar to traditional stories
about the mouse, and that has helped health educators spread their message.
"If you come in and say to do this in relation to the illness, it doesn't
make sense," Bill says. "If you apply it to culture, it makes sense."