Africa, Asia vulnerable to spread of Zika virus

Defined as “an extraordinary event which is to constitute a public health risk to other states through the worldwide spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated global response”, it is essentially a call to arms to countries to galvanise resources in an effort to stop the further spread of the disease.

Dallas County Health and Human Services said it received confirmation that a Texas resident contracted the virus after having sexual contact with a person who returned from a country where Zika was present.

The Zika virus is found in tropical locales with large mosquito populations.

World Health Organization is recommending that visitors and residents in affected areas, especially pregnant women, take measures to avoid being bitten by mosquitoes that transmit the virus. The CDC is trying to figure out if an uptick in cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a neurological disorder, that was reported by Brazil Ministry of Health is connected to Zika.

Meanwhile the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) has advised that any pregnant women in the United Kingdom who test positive for Zika should have additional scans to monitor the health of their babies. “There’s a way to prevent transmission, here as a mosquito is a little bit trickier”, Byrne-Lutz said.

World Health Organization warned last week through a communiqué about the presence of the mosquito Aedes Aegypti, which transmits the Zika virus and also dengue and chikungunya, in all the countries of the Americas, but Chile and Canada.

An outbreak of Zika has spread to 23 nations in the Americas in the previous year, marked by a strongly suspected link to thousands of children born with microcephaly, an abnormally small brain and skull, in Brazil.

“While Zika is new, the issue of mosquito borne-diseases is not, and we are prepared for that”.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Thursday that a review of blood donation policies was underway, based on whether a person may have been exposed to the virus. There are now six confirmed Zika cases in Texas.

Frieden added that studies on sexual transmission are not easy studies to do, but the CDC is continuing to explore that avenue of transmission.

Canadian researcher Gary Kobinger told Reuters he believes an experimental Zika shot might be able to be used on a limited emergency basis as soon as late 2016, although full regulatory approval will take years. All previous cases in the US were travelers returning to the USA from countries where the virus was present. Blood samples later revealed they both had Zika.

Spokesman Gregory Hartl says WHO is organizing and supporting research about the mostly mosquito-borne virus and “under what conditions is it transmitted and via which routes other than the mosquito route”. Another alternative would be to create an attenuated Zika virus using a method similar to the one in the development of the dengue vaccine.

More than half of Mumbai’s 20 million inhabitants live in slums-at least one million reside in Dharavi alone-enduring cramped conditions, poor ventilation and a lack of toilets.