A relatively new mosquito-borne virus is prompting worldwide concern because of an alarming connection to a neurological birth disorder and the rapid spread of the virus across the globe.
World Health Organization Director- General Margaret Chan said, “The level of alarm is extremely high,” which is why they are considering declaring a public health emergency. The Zika virus, transmitted by the aggressive Aedes aegypti mosquito, has now spread to at least 24 countries. The WHO estimates 3 million to 4 million people across the Americas will be infected with the virus in the next year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning pregnant women against travel to those areas; health officials in several of those countries are telling female citizens to avoid becoming pregnant, in some cases for up to two years. “As long as the mosquito keeps reproducing, each and every one of us is losing the battle against the mosquito,” Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said on Friday. “We have to mobilize so we do not lose this battle.” The U.S. Defense Department is offering voluntary relocation to pregnant employees and their beneficiaries who are stationed in affected areas. “That’s a pandemic in progress,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
at the National Institutes of Health. “It isn't as if it’s turning around and dying out, it’s getting worse and worse as the days go by.” Peru became the most recent country to report a Zika case, with its health minister saying Friday that the country’s National Institute of Health confirmed the virus in a Venezuelan patient who came to Peru from Colombia Here are five important things to know about Zika:
1. What is Zika and why is it so serious? The Zika virus is a flavivirus, part of the same family as yellow fever, West Nile, chikungunya and dengue. But unlike some of those viruses, there is no vaccine to prevent Zika or medicine to treat the infection. Zika is commanding worldwide attention
because of an alarming connection between the virus and microcephaly, a neurological disorder that results in babies being born with abnormally small heads. This causes severe developmental issues
and sometimes death. Since November, Brazil has seen 4,180 cases of microcephaly in babies born to
women who were infected with Zima during their pregnancies. To put that in perspective, there were only 146 cases in 2014. So far, 51 babies have died. Other Latin American countries are now seeing cases in newborns as well, while in the United States one Hawaiian baby was born with microcephaly linked to the Zima virus after his mother returned from Brazil. Several states have confirmed the virus in individuals who traveled to areas where the virus is circulating, including Illinois, where health officials are monitoring two infected pregnant women. The CDC is asking OB-GYNs to review fetal ultrasounds and do maternal testing for any pregnant woman who has traveled to one of the 24 countries where Zika is currently active. A smaller outbreak of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder
that can lead to life-threatening paralysis, is also linked to Zika in a several countries.
2. How is Zika spread? The virus is transmitted when an Andes mosquito bites a person with an active
infection and then spreads the virus by biting others. Those people then become carriers during the time they have symptoms. In most people, symptoms of the virus are mild, including fever, headache, rash and possible pink eye. In fact, 80% of those infected never know they have the disease. That’s especially concerning for pregnant women, as this virus has now been shown to pass through amniotic fluid to the
growing baby. “What we now know,” said Dr. Lyle Petersen, director of the CDC’s Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, “is that fetuses can be infected with the virus. That’s not new for infectious diseases, but it is new for this virus.” “This is a very remarkable and unusual situation,” agreed Fauci, “because the other flaviviruses don’t do that to our knowledge. You just don’t see that with dengue or West Nile or chikungunya.” In addition, the CDC says there have been documented cases of virus transmission during labor, blood transfusion, laboratory exposure and sexual contact. While Zima has been found in breast milk, it’s not yet confirmed it can be passed to the baby through nursing. There have been only two documented cases linking Zika to s*x. During the 2013 Zika outbreak in French Polynesia, Fluid and urine samples from a 44-year-old Tahitian man tested positive for Zika even when blood samples did not. Five years before that, in 2008, a Colorado microbiologist named Brian Foy contracted Zika after travel to Senegal; his wife came down with the disease a few days later even though she had not left northern Colorado and was not exposed to any mosquitoes carrying the virus. Canadian Blood Services, which manages most of Canada’s supply of blood and blood products, is asking all potential
blood donors who have traveled anywhere other than Canada, the United States or Europe to delay donating blood until one month after their return as a precaution even though the risk of a donor infecting a recipient is very low. The American Red Cross says it is considering asking donors to self-defer for 28 days but is not taking this step yet.
World Health Organization Director- General Margaret Chan said, “The level of alarm is extremely high,” which is why they are considering declaring a public health emergency. The Zika virus, transmitted by the aggressive Aedes aegypti mosquito, has now spread to at least 24 countries. The WHO estimates 3 million to 4 million people across the Americas will be infected with the virus in the next year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning pregnant women against travel to those areas; health officials in several of those countries are telling female citizens to avoid becoming pregnant, in some cases for up to two years. “As long as the mosquito keeps reproducing, each and every one of us is losing the battle against the mosquito,” Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said on Friday. “We have to mobilize so we do not lose this battle.” The U.S. Defense Department is offering voluntary relocation to pregnant employees and their beneficiaries who are stationed in affected areas. “That’s a pandemic in progress,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
at the National Institutes of Health. “It isn't as if it’s turning around and dying out, it’s getting worse and worse as the days go by.” Peru became the most recent country to report a Zika case, with its health minister saying Friday that the country’s National Institute of Health confirmed the virus in a Venezuelan patient who came to Peru from Colombia Here are five important things to know about Zika:
1. What is Zika and why is it so serious? The Zika virus is a flavivirus, part of the same family as yellow fever, West Nile, chikungunya and dengue. But unlike some of those viruses, there is no vaccine to prevent Zika or medicine to treat the infection. Zika is commanding worldwide attention
because of an alarming connection between the virus and microcephaly, a neurological disorder that results in babies being born with abnormally small heads. This causes severe developmental issues
and sometimes death. Since November, Brazil has seen 4,180 cases of microcephaly in babies born to
women who were infected with Zima during their pregnancies. To put that in perspective, there were only 146 cases in 2014. So far, 51 babies have died. Other Latin American countries are now seeing cases in newborns as well, while in the United States one Hawaiian baby was born with microcephaly linked to the Zima virus after his mother returned from Brazil. Several states have confirmed the virus in individuals who traveled to areas where the virus is circulating, including Illinois, where health officials are monitoring two infected pregnant women. The CDC is asking OB-GYNs to review fetal ultrasounds and do maternal testing for any pregnant woman who has traveled to one of the 24 countries where Zika is currently active. A smaller outbreak of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder
that can lead to life-threatening paralysis, is also linked to Zika in a several countries.
2. How is Zika spread? The virus is transmitted when an Andes mosquito bites a person with an active
infection and then spreads the virus by biting others. Those people then become carriers during the time they have symptoms. In most people, symptoms of the virus are mild, including fever, headache, rash and possible pink eye. In fact, 80% of those infected never know they have the disease. That’s especially concerning for pregnant women, as this virus has now been shown to pass through amniotic fluid to the
growing baby. “What we now know,” said Dr. Lyle Petersen, director of the CDC’s Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, “is that fetuses can be infected with the virus. That’s not new for infectious diseases, but it is new for this virus.” “This is a very remarkable and unusual situation,” agreed Fauci, “because the other flaviviruses don’t do that to our knowledge. You just don’t see that with dengue or West Nile or chikungunya.” In addition, the CDC says there have been documented cases of virus transmission during labor, blood transfusion, laboratory exposure and sexual contact. While Zima has been found in breast milk, it’s not yet confirmed it can be passed to the baby through nursing. There have been only two documented cases linking Zika to s*x. During the 2013 Zika outbreak in French Polynesia, Fluid and urine samples from a 44-year-old Tahitian man tested positive for Zika even when blood samples did not. Five years before that, in 2008, a Colorado microbiologist named Brian Foy contracted Zika after travel to Senegal; his wife came down with the disease a few days later even though she had not left northern Colorado and was not exposed to any mosquitoes carrying the virus. Canadian Blood Services, which manages most of Canada’s supply of blood and blood products, is asking all potential
blood donors who have traveled anywhere other than Canada, the United States or Europe to delay donating blood until one month after their return as a precaution even though the risk of a donor infecting a recipient is very low. The American Red Cross says it is considering asking donors to self-defer for 28 days but is not taking this step yet.
3. Where is the Zika virus now?
The Zika virus is now being locally
transmitted in Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil,
Cape Verde, Colombia, Dominican
Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French
Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana,
Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico,
Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Saint
Martin, Suriname, Samoa, the U.S. Virgin
Islands and Venezuela, says the CDC.
Zika has arrived in the United States, but
only from travelers returning from these
infected areas. The concern, of course, is
whether these imported cases could result
in locally transmitted cases within the
United States.
The Aedes albopictus, or Asian tiger
mosquito, which along with Aedes aegypti
transmits Zika virus, is present in many
areas of the United States.
If mosquitoes in the United States do
become carriers, a model created by
Toronto researchers found more than 63%
of the U.S. population lives in areas where
Zika virus might spread during seasonally
warm months. A little over 7% of
Americans live in areas where the cold
might not kill off the mosquito in the
winter, leaving them vulnerable year
round.
4. What can you do to protect yourself against
Zika?
With no treatment or vaccine available, the
only protection against Zika is to avoid
travel to areas with an active infestation. If
you do travel to a country where Zika is
present, the CDC advises strict adherence
to mosquito protection measures: Use an
EPA-approved repellent over sunscreen,
wear long pants and long-sleeved shirts
thick enough to block a mosquito bite, and
sleep in air-conditioned, screened rooms,
among others.
If you have Zika, you can keep from
spreading it to others by avoiding
mosquito bites during the first week of
your illness, says the CDC. The female
Aedes aegypti, the primary carrier of Zika,
is an aggressive biter, preferring daytime
to dusk and indoors to outdoors. Keeping
screens on windows and doors is critical to
preventing entry to homes and hotel
rooms.
5. What’s being done to stop Zika?
Eze Afrika
