“It’s necessary for every single Cuban to take up this battle as a personal matter”, Castro wrote in a national message sounding the alarm over Zika, which is carried by mosquitoes that transmit the virus to humans and which is suspected of causing birth defects after infecting pregnant women.
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The CDC team is working with dozens of members of Brazil’s Health Ministry, as well as Paraiba state’s health secretariat.
The research team, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), sequenced Zika viruses found in the amniotic fluid of pregnant women who tested positive for the disease and in the brains of fetuses with microcephaly.
Concerns over the spread of the Zika virus is changing the way blood banks operate.
The City of Dallas plans to begin its annual Mosquito Abatement Program a month ahead of schedule in 2016, due largely to the emergence of the Zika virus.
In a rare front-page message on the state-run newspaper Granma, Castro said Cuba’s fight to prevent the arrival of the virus had been hampered by “the inadequate technical quality” of efforts against the mosquito, insufficient work to clean up areas where the mosquito propagates and poor weather conditions.
The hope is that this study will either provide more definitive evidence establishing the link between Zika and microcephaly or identify other factors that may be to blame, either in combination with Zika or instead of Zika.
The recruitment process is expected to take four to five weeks, but the timetable will largely depend on how receptive potential subjects are.
According to the tourism board, the Brazilian government has set aside $465 million to combat Zika and has assembled a task force of more than 300,000 people.
On Monday, the CDC planned to form eight teams of American and Brazilian investigators.
African countries vary in their access to healthcare and disease detection and management, and ones with strong health systems are likely to cope better with a Zika outbreak, according to the WHO. “Colombia has seen a 50 percent increase in cases since October…” Republican appropriators in Congress told the White House last week that agencies like the CDC should first use leftover funds from the nation’s Ebola response before requesting additional funding, though the White House has argued those funds are already planned for other public health purposes.
But Staples said she tended to lean toward the Health Ministry’s view.
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Brown: A few years ago, and recently in Texas, there was sexual transmission of Zika, where the man had been infected and infected his female partner. “The scope and the size of the children who were presenting (microcephaly) at the same time, it really made it apparent to me that there was something unique happening in this situation”.
