Zika virus is now suspected to be the cause of neonatal malformations in thousands of new born babies in Brazil and other Latin American countries.
Advertisement
The Zika virus has been linked to birth defects.
Zika is also suspected of links to a neurological disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome.
As the World Health Organization convenes a special emergency committee to assess the Zika virus outbreak, here’s an explanation of what constitutes a “public health emergency of worldwide concern”, (PHEIC) according to the global health agency.
Dominican Air Force personnel fumigate various locations in Santo Domingo against the Aedes aegypti mosquito, vector of the Zika virus, on January 23, 2016.
As Brazil will be the host of this summer’s Olympic games, the International Olympic Committee, country’s authorities and WHO experts will cooperate for implementing virus management in accordance to the international health regulations. No decision is expected before Tuesday at the earliest.
Sen. Charles Schumer is pushing a three-point plan aimed at containing the Zika virus outbreak that has already affected 30 people in the USA, including at least five in NY.
Such consultations are relatively rare, underlining the scale of concern felt by the organisation.
WHO, which was widely criticized for its slow response to the 2014 Ebola crisis in West Africa, has been eager to show its responsiveness this time.
For the past four years, a team from the University of South Australia have been working with biotech company Sementis to develop a vaccine for the mosquito-borne Chikungunya virus. “And those mosquitoes have to successfully find a human host that is susceptible to the disease, and take the blood from that individual and then infect them”.
Advertisement
World Health Organization has so far refrained from issuing travel warnings related to Zika, stressing that the most effective form of prevention is getting rid of stagnant water where mosquitos easily breed, and using personal protection against mosquito bites such as using repellant and sleeping under mosquito nets.
