If calamity comes upon us, whether the sword of judgment, or plague or famine, we will stand in your presence before this temple that bears your Name and will cry out to you in our distress, and you will hear us and save us.

                                                                                                                2 Chronicles 20:9

The Hard News of Zika

Zika is a calamity that may come upon the pregnant women and babies of Nicaragua. As medical doctors trying to help people here in the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, it has us so worried. In the next six months, zika is expected to spread to half the population here.

You may already know about zika from your news. It is primarily a mosquito borne virus. It is may also be spread from a mother to an unborn child and through sexual contact. For most people, zika causes only a mild illness with a low grade fever, headache, joint pain, red eyes, and some people don’t ever have any symptoms. BUT if a pregnant woman gets zika her baby has a 1 in 3 chance of getting birth defects like microcephaly. In fact, zika is the first mosquito born illness that can actually cause birth defects. For more detailed information and updates about the virus and its spread, please check the AMOS website AMOS Health and Hope.

For updated information about travel to Nicaragua and zika, check out our latest updates on our AMOS website.

Unlike the U.S., most people here do not have screens, air conditioning, or easy access to mosquito repellent, which is what helps to prevent getting bitten by a mosquito with zika. Poor and crowded housing conditions, a lack of a consistent trash pickup system, and high amounts of standing water as the rainy season begins makes the situation worse.

The Good News of IM Mission Work

As your medical missionaries, we have 15 years of experience working alongside communities throughout Nicaragua establishing a network of Community Health Workers (CHW)s who are trained to improve health. In addition, we network with other local Nicaraguan doctors, nurses, and health professionals. Our teams here are already at work helping to prevent the spread of zika! Because NOW is the time to act, our teams are hard at work:

• Developing educational materials with our CHWs;

• CHWs are educating about zika and how to prevent it during home visits;

• Educating and mobilizing community members about how to eliminate mosquito breeding grounds and prevent mosquito bites;

• Developing an innovation for community engagement to reach a larger population to mosquito vector control and zika prevention;

• Fundraising so we can reach more people together.

Please Pray For Our Team

1. For all the women in the US and Latin America who are currently pregnant and have zika;

2. For strength and inspiration to continue the necessary but not so glamorous work of preventing the spread of zika;

3. To be able to raise the necessary $65,000 ($1.30 per person) to train a team of 50 Community Health Workers who will each cover 12 households, reaching a total of 50,000 people with educational materials about zika, eliminating mosquito breeding grounds, and getting access to contraception for those who desire to delay pregnancy during this epidemic Learn More.;

4. For continued development of innovations to reach the most people with the most effective prevention of zika in the least time.;

5. For a computer programmer missionary to work alongside us to develop an app for the Community Health Workers to us be able to use tablets to get real-time zika and mosquito breeding ground data in order to be able to respond quickly to the epidemic..

If you want to share what we are doing with others, you can share on Facebook: https:www.youcaring.com/StopNicaZika. You can also use #StopNicaZika.

As IM Medical missionaries supported by all of you, we are very grateful to be here with our AMOS team at the start of this epidemic to contribute to the movement to PREVENT the spread of zika. Thank you so much for your support.

Thank you and God bless!

Laura and David Parajón

Your IM Missionaries