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Baby born in US to Honduran mom with Zika has birth defect

GoLocal teams with Graphiq to show reported cases of the Zika virus in the United States and around the world.

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An ultrasound on Friday confirmed the baby had birth defects, including low birth weight and microcephaly.

Mother and the baby with the rare condition are doing well now, said Dr. Abdulla Al-Kahan of the Hackensack University Medical Center. Dr. Al-Khan also noticed the baby had calcification and dilated ventricles in its brain.

“The mother is stable, obviously sad, which is the normal emotional reaction given the situation”, he said.

A New Jersey hospital has reported a case where a baby took birth with Zika virus-related microcephaly.

Pregnant women should stay away from countries where mosquitoes are spreading the virus, including South and Central America or the Caribbean. She then came to New Jersey, where she has family, to seek further treatment, said Al-Kahn. The hospital officials believe the mother was infected when she was on second trimester.

Although two babies have now been born with Zika-related birth defects in the US and almost 600 people in the states have contracted the virus while traveling, there are no cases of Americans getting infected from a USA mosquito.

A woman visiting the US gave birth to a baby with microcephaly in Hackensack, New Jersey, after contracting the Zika virus elsewhere, according to ABC News. She delivered the baby while visiting the United States at the Donna A. Sanzari Women’s Hospital at Hackensack UMC.

Al-Khan stressed that neither the baby girl nor the mother pose an infectious risk to others.

The vast majority of Zika infections have occurred in Latin America, with Brazil the hot zone with an estimated 5,000 cases of microcephaly.

To limit any potential spread of Zika virus via mosquitoes, health officials on the federal, state and local level are deploying a three-pronged strategy: improving mosquito control; expanding their ability to test for Zika; and urging the public to protect themselves against mosquitoes.

While this is the first birth of a child with Zika-linked complications at Hackensack, it is not the first such case in the U.S. In February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that a woman delivered a baby who suffered from severe microcephaly as a result of Zika infection.

She experienced a fever and rash, both symptoms of the mosquito-borne disease, which is known to cause the devastating birth defect microcephaly and other neurological disorders. USA Today reports that the baby hadn’t been developing properly for the past month. Earlier this year, the World Health Organization declared Zika a public health emergency of worldwide concern.

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Information on the outcomes or stages of these pregnancies has not been released.

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