Meanwhile, public health officials in the United States are bracing for original cases of Zika to appear, as the Aedes aegypti- the primary vector of Zika, a day-biting mosquito- already inhabits Gulf Coast states.
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European researchers uncovered an extremely abnormal brain – not only a fraction of the proper size but lacking the usual crinkly neural folds – in a fetus whose mother suffered Zika symptoms at the end of the first trimester while she was living in Brazil.
“Our goal really is to protect pregnant women”, Frieden said during the panel.
“Right now we’re focusing on Puerto Rico, where we’ve just started seeing cases of Zika as well as cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome”, Dr. James Sejvar, a neuroepidemiologist at the CDC, told Reuters in an interview.
OR public health physician Richard Leman said the woman was tested because of her symptoms. The alarm regarding Zika virus now is the possibility that it could harm unborn babies in pregnant women.
A list of Zika affected countries can be found by clicking, here.
However, Gupta also stressed that pregnant women should consider postponing travel to areas where Zika virus transmission is ongoing due to possible association between infection and poor pregnancy outcomes (e.g. microcephaly and other birth defects).
The Zika virus is spreading rapidly through Latin America. There is now no vaccine or treatment for Zika. She had an ultrasound at 29 and 32 weeks of pregnancy in Slovenia, which confirmed that the fetus had microcephaly, with “calcifications in the brain and placenta”.
Specialists welcomed the initiative, saying it showed how the global health community had learnt crucial lessons from West Africa’s Ebola epidemic, which killed more than 11,300 people.
Infectious diseases professor Mark Woolhouse from the University of Edinburgh described the commitment as one of the most welcome developments in decades.
Women in countries with an outbreak have been warned to avoid becoming pregnant.
Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee are the latest states to have the Zika virus brought home by travelers returning from South or Central America, or the Caribbean, while a new study has revealed that it may potentially cause more birth defects than suspected.
Catholics for Choice, a liberal advocacy group based in Washington, said in a statement it would run ads in the International New York Times and El Diario de Hoy in El Salvador on Thursday, the eve of a papal trip to Cuba and Mexico.
The Catholic Church teaches that life begins at the moment of conception and that abortion is killing.
But the World Health Organization is also studying increased cases of Guillain-Barre.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is hosting a conference call and webinar with Florida hospital workers to discuss the spread of the Zika virus.
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There are at least 32 known cases in the continental U.S.
