SALVADOR, Brazil — Nearly a quarter of a million soldiers, sailors and other military personnel began fanning through Brazilian cities over the weekend as part of an ambitious campaign to combat the mosquitoes that are spreading Zika, the virus believed to be linked to a surge in infants born with severe brain damage.
Yet instead of insecticide and repellent, the troops were armed with wads of fliers that instruct residents how to reduce the breeding grounds for Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that transmits Zika, dengue fever and a close cousin, chikungunya.
“At least once a week we should take 15 minutes, which isn’t much, to see, inspect and clean our homes,” Marcelo Castro, the Brazilian health minister, said on Saturday during a news conference here in Salvador, a city in the northeast of Brazil where cases of dengue and Zika have been soaring.