According to Dr Sylvain Aldighieri, of the Pan American Health Organisation, if the Zika virus spreads in the same way as the viral infection dengue, there could be as many as three to four million cases in the Americas in the next 12 months.
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“Last year, the virus was detected in the Americas, where it is now spreading explosively”, Chan said in a briefing to the WHO’s executive board.
WHO’s Chan said a direct, causal relationship between the Zika virus and such birth defects has not yet been firmly established, but it is strongly suspected.
WHO says the mosquito-borne virus was originally seen as a mild risk to humans, but it has since grown rapidly to a public-health threat of “alarming proportions”.
Moreover, reports indicate that there is a link between the virus and microcephaly which leads to babies being born with small heads with undeveloped brains.
“There have been some people who have come back to Australia who’ve had Zika virus infection”, he told the ABC.
If a Zika vaccine eventually were developed, it’s not clear how widely it would be used. The German Foreign Ministry issued a statement in December saying that pregnant women “should not if possible make unnecessary trips to areas of the Zika outbreak”.
The government of El Salvador, meanwhile, has taken the unprecedented step of urging women to avoid getting pregnant for two years. Infected mosquitoes can then spread the virus to other people through bites.
The first registered case of the virus in Europe was a man in Germany in 2013 who had travelled to Thailand, according to DPA. Since then, the disease has spread within Brazil and to 22 other countries and territories in the region.
Again, the virus is transmitted through mosquitos, and there have yet to be any confirmed cases of the virus originating in California. There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which is like dengue and causes mild fever, rash and red eyes.
In their article, “The Emerging Zika Pandemic – Enhancing Preparedness”, medical experts Daniel R. Lucey and Lawrence O. Goslin, called for the World Health Organization to learn from past mistakes and show global leadership.
“While we don’t have a vaccine against the virus Zika, the war should focus on the extermination of mosquito breeding sites”, Rousseff wrote on Twitter.
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In recent weeks experts have confirmed that the virus is spreading through Latin America and the Caribbean, and fears have mounted that the mosquitoes which carry the virus are already in the United Kingdom.
