Episode 1

Antonia Jardenia da Silva from Brazil is an 18-year old daughter of a Brazilian farmer with basic education. Her village Milhã was severely affected by the latest heatwave in North Eastern Brazil, which turned some parts of the country into deserts. As a result of the drought, people started receiving water in large mobile tanks, provided by the government which subsequently became the breeding ground for Zika-virus mosquitos that caused a health pandemic of Microcephaly. Jardenia was 17 years old and 8 months pregnant when she discovered she had Zika. She found out the gender of her unborn baby and the fact that it is going to have Microcephaly at the same time. She was forced to move to the big city of Fortaleza because of the disease and gave birth all by herself as her family could not afford to accompany her. She lived in a “support house”. A month after her daughter Victoria was born, while still at the hospital Jardenia fell in love with Anderson who was working as a doorman. He helped her raise the baby in one of Fortaleza’s favelas. Jardenia still misses her family and feels alone in the big city.

In 2015, a powerful El Niño, a climate pattern that warms the ocean surface in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, caused major weather changes worldwide. In South America, it created high-pressure systems that trapped warm air over eastern Brazil, leading to clear skies and less rain. This heatwave dried out the soil and worsened the drought in Brazil, causing severe water shortages. To cope, people began storing water in open containers, which became ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

The hot and humid conditions were perfect for Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which spread the Zika virus. These mosquitoes thrive in temperatures between 24°C and 34°C and breed quickly in the heat, leading to more outbreaks.

Human-caused climate change is expanding the range of these mosquitoes beyond the equatorial latitudes where they usually live. As the planet warms, cooler areas are becoming suitable for them. In Brazil, warming could lengthen the mosquito season by about two months annually within the next 30 years, raising the risk of diseases like Zika spreading to new regions.