New sites have been reporting cases of the disease with growing alarm in recent months, but now the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the Zika virus an global public health emergency on Monday, which is a rare move and a clear indication that the outbreak poses a real threat.
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A sexually transmitted case of Zika in Texas has scientists scrambling to understand how much of a risk infection through sex is for the usually mosquito-spread illness. Our Department of Health will continue to be in constant communication with all county health offices, hospitals and the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “If you extrapolate the rates in Brazil to Colombia, we should have tens, even hundreds of cases”.
Sign up for our FREE E-Weekly for more coverage like this sent to your inbox! “Just like in a hurricane, we always say to ourselves, ‘We’ll prepare for the worst and hope for the best.’ And we’re going to do everything we can to stay ahead of the Zika virus”.
If they contract Zika virus, there’s seems to be a possibility it could cross the placenta, get into the amniotic fluid and cause microcephaly, a birth defect affecting brain development where the baby is born with an abnormally small head.
If you’ve been too busy dealing with immediate concerns to really research Zika virus, now might be the time to arm yourself with some information.
Latin American health ministers meeting in Uruguay are focusing on why Zika has been linked to birth defects in Brazil but not in other countries where the virus has been detected. If you been exposed to the Zika virus, it’s likely that you won’t be infected with that same virus again.
Health officials in Texas say a patient there caught the virus through sex.
The Zika (ZEE’-ka) virus was first discovered in monkey in Uganda in 1947 – its name comes from the Zika forest where it was first discovered. They flew to a country where mosquitoes that can carry the Zika virus are flying around. Because of the rapid spread of the mosquito-borne virus, the World Health Organization has since stepped in in order to not only develop a cure but also to determine factors that affect the dissemination of the virus. Rodriguez said the mosquito that carries Zika is a daytime mosquito, rather than one that tends to come out at dawn or dusk. We need to know when is the critical period [during which the fetus can be most affected], and what are the specific consequences of air pollution that are most harmful.
Because it’s almost impossible to predict what the next big outbreak might be (Zika wasn’t a big deal before its first major outbreak in 2007), creating a system that can respond quickly to emerging infections is key, Pavia said.
Meanwhile, Ko said travel restrictions against countries with Zika cases were not being considered at the moment.
Most people infected with Zika experience, at the most, only mild symptoms.
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Basically, you should only be concerned if you’ve been traveling to one of the areas we mentioned earlier where outbreaks have been reported, including Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands. We can measure [Zika] antibodies in groups that were infected and not infected, and see the association with microcephaly both for the babies and the mothers.
