purple areas show the countries and territories now filers Zika virus transmission.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
links increasingly strong between the spread of Zika and microcephaly newborn led the World Health Organization (WHO) today to declare a public health emergency of international concern.
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan in Geneva, Switzerland, said this on the advice of a committee of 18 experts and advisers, who she said "accept a causal link between infection Zika during pregnancy and microcephaly is strongly suspected but not scientifically proven. " Zika, a virus transmitted by mosquitoes, is currently spreading across 24 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean and Cape Verde, an island off West Africa. Chan noted that there were "particularly strong association in time and space" between the arrival of the virus and microcephaly detection and other neurological disorders. Although Brazil has had more than 4,000 suspected cases microcephaly, he confirmed 270 cases of the harmful brain disease in children born to mothers who had proof of having been infected with the virus.
Although Brazil is the only country microcephaly report a peak in the current outbreak, French Polynesia in 2014 was up in this rare disease concurrent with viral propagation, Chan said. Brazil, El Salvador, and French Polynesia also suspect Zika could lead to an increase in cases of a neurological disorder in adults, Guillain-Barre syndrome, which causes temporary paralysis. "the committee said the group microcephaly and other neurological complications constitute an extraordinary event and public threat to other parts of the world, "said Chan. She was careful to note that his concern centered reporting on these groups and not spread the virus itself, which does not cause symptoms in 80% of those it infects, and rash and acute fever in the other 20%.
Many criticized the WHO for not ringing the alarm when the Ebola outbreak first surfaced in 2014. "It was a very difficult decision to discern between what is urgent public health and international significance which should be precautionary measures because of a possible connection between Zika and these groups, "said the committee chairman, David Heymann epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
Chan suggested that pregnant women who do not live in the affected Zika countries may want to delay travel to these areas, but has not issued a formal travel warning for them, as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did. Chan stressed that "the committee found no public health justification for restrictions on travel or trade to prevent the spread of the virus Zika." Many countries ignored similar recommendations during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and has imposed that WHO saw travel as unnecessary and even against-productive and. trade restrictions
parallel to the statement, the committee made two major recommendations: Standardize monitoring microcephaly and other neurological disorders in areas where Zika spreads, and more research to discern whether the if clusters are really related to the virus.
"There is an urgent need to do much more work," said Chan. She also stressed that the world had to step up fight against mosquito efforts, monitoring of Zika and efforts to develop a vaccine. "Can you imagine if we do not do all this work now and wait until scientific evidence comes out?" She asked.
Lawrence Gostin, a lawyer entitled global health at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, says the statement, but said in a press release that WHO needs to define more explicitly how it will respond. "Margaret Chan was silent on the strategy of the organization will take to the field to check Zika and how it will mobilize the major funding needed for surveillance, mosquito control, and critical research, "argued Gostin." Without a clear strategy and sufficient resources , sounding an alert is just not enough. "
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