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WHO expects Zika virus to spread through Americas, women warned not to get pregnant

BobStackFan4Life

BobStackFan4Life

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As Zika virus spreads, El Salvador asks women not to get pregnant until 2018
El Salvador on Thursday took the most extreme stance so far: Deputy Health Minister Eduardo Espinoza urged women to refrain from getting pregnant before 2018...A campaign to delay pregnancy would seem to be an implicit endorsement of birth control. For a region that is majority Roman Catholic, this presents a potential conflict, as the church has long condemned contraception. The Rev. Hector Figueroa, a priest in charge of health issues in the San Salvador archdiocese, said that the pregnancy alert appeared in the Salvadoran news media Friday morning and that the archbishop had not had time to formulate an official response.

“Morality says that people shouldn’t have that control” over procreation, Figueroa said. “But the church also isn’t going to say something that runs contrary to life and health.”

“This is a very delicate issue,” he said.
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Outside the National Maternity Hospital in San Salvador, Selina Velasquez Cortez, a 30-year-old employee of a sardine factory who has been trying to get pregnant for two years, said there is no way she will stop trying now.

“After so much time wanting to be a mother, I’m not going to give up now” because of the deputy health minister’s statement, she declared. “I think it’s absurd.”
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the real devastation apparently strikes the children born to women with the illness, who can have permanent physical and mental defects, according to research in Brazil linking a surge in the number of microcephaly cases to Zika. There is also growing concern that Zika virus could be linked to Guillain-Barré syndrome, which can result in weeks of paralysis.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/as-zika-virus-spreads-el-salvador-asks-women-not-to-get-pregnant-until-2018/2016/01/22/1dc2dadc-c11f-11e5-98c8-7fab78677d51_story.html
WHO expects Zika virus to spread through Americas, except Canada and Chile
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Monday that the mosquito-borne Zika virus is expected to spread to all countries in the Americas - with the exception of Canada and Chile.
Speaking in Geneva, Director General of the WHO Margaret Chan said she was "very concerned" by the outbreak and by the possibility that it could lead to "neurological syndromes" - although she gave no further details.
Cases in Brazil
The virus is suspected of causing brain damage to babies born in Brazil. Since October, 3,500 babies in the country have been diagnosed with microcephaly, a debilitating condition which causes the heads of newborn babies to be smaller than normal. This results in abnormalities including disruption of motor skills, speech and mobility.
While Brazil has seen the largest number of cases in the Americas, Zika has also been detected in Colombia, El Salvador (photo of fumigation) and Panama. The virus was detected in three people in New York last week.
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Zika can be transmitted through blood and has been isolated in human semen.
The WHO said more evidence was needed before it was known if the virus could be sexually transmitted.
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http://www.dw.com/en/who-expects-zika-virus-to-spread-through-americas-except-canada-and-chile/a-19002259
 
I'll wait til pour weighs in to figure out how much to panic.
 
Why 2018 in El Salvador? Elsewhere they want women to wait for only 6-8 months before getting pregnant. What is the basis for these time spans?

Hello! Does anybody know what they are doing here?

Lots of luck by the way. Women who want to get pregnant can be a pretty hard headed lot.
 
Zika in Texas? 'We have the perfect storm to allow virus to flourish'
The World Health Organisation has warned that the virus is spreading “explosively” through the Americas, with one estimate that there could be as many as 4m infections across the continent over the next year.
“I could show you dozens of neighborhoods like this in south-east Texas, along the Gulf Coast,” said Hotez. “What we have is dilapidated housing, inadequate or absent window screens, standing water, poor drainage, which are going to allow the mosquitoes to breed, and then the classic piece to this is the discarded tyres along the side of the road. Aedes mosquitoes love discarded tyres filled with water.”
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/29/zika-virus-spread-americas-texas-researcher
 
Dilma Roussef calls on Brazil society to unite against Zika virus
President Dilma Rousseff has called on the whole of Brazilian society to help combat the spread of the Zika virus, which has been linked to birth defects.

Ms Rousseff said national mobilisation was needed to eliminate the mosquitoes that spread the virus, and urged community groups and unions to help.

Zika is thought to cause a form of infant brain damage, microcephaly.

Three to four million people could be infected with Zika in the Americas this year, experts have warned.

Ms Rousseff rejected comments made by her health minister earlier this week, who said Brazil was badly losing the fight against the virus.

But Brazil is the country worst affected by the Zika outbreak, with 270 cases of microcephaly confirmed by the health ministry and 3,448 being investigated.

Concerns have arisen about Brazil's ability to safely host this year's Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. Thomas Bach, the head of the International Olympic Committee, has said steps are being taken to protect the event.

The IOC said it will issue guidelines later on Friday for athletes and visitors taking part.

Abortion petition

A group of Brazilian lawyers, activists and scientists is to ask the country's supreme court to allow abortions for women who have contracted the virus.

Abortions are illegal in Brazil, except in health emergencies or cases of rape or, since 2012, another brain condition known as anencephaly.

Deborah Diniz explains why she feels abortion laws need to change in Brazil
The new petition is to be delivered to the supreme court in two months' time. The BBC has learned that it argues that "the Brazilian state is responsible for the Zika outbreak" for not having eradicated the Aedes aegypti mosquito which carries it.

Brazilian women "should not be penalised for the consequences of flawed policies", it says.

The group behind the microcephaly supreme court plea also won the exception for anencephaly in 2012.

Debora Diniz, a law professor at Brasilia University, told the BBC the disease disproportionately affected the poor.

She said: "It is important to remember, when we talk about abortion and reproductive rights in general, that we have a social class split in Brazil - wealthy women will access safe abortion, legal or illegal, and poor women will go to the illegal market or continue to be pregnant."

No vaccine

Most people do not develop symptoms of the Zika virus but may pass the virus on to their children. There is no known cure or vaccine. The US says it hopes to begin human vaccine trials by the end of 2016.

Officials from the US National Institute of Health (NIH) said they had two potential Zika vaccines in development. One that is based on an experimental West Nile vaccine could be repurposed for Zika and enter clinical trials by the end of 2016, the NIH said.

WHO director general Dr Margaret Chan said Zika had gone "from a mild threat to one of alarming proportions". She has set up a Zika "emergency team" following the "explosive" spread of the virus.

The team will meet on Monday to decide whether Zika should be treated as a global emergency.

Zika was first detected in Uganda in 1947, but has never caused an outbreak on this scale. Brazil reported the first cases of Zika in South America in May 2015.

WHO officials said between 500,000 and 1.5 million people had been infected in Brazil, and the virus has since spread to more than 20 countries in the region.

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What is the Zika virus?

Spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which also carries dengue fever and yellow fever
First discovered in Africa in the 1940s but is now spreading in Latin America
Scientists say there is growing evidence of a link to microcephaly, that leads to babies being born with small heads
Can lead to fever and a rash but most people show no symptoms, and there is no known cure
Only way to fight Zika is to clear stagnant water where mosquitoes breed, and protect against mosquito bites
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http://www.bbc.com/news/health-35435684
 
:eek:
Sexually-transmitted Zika case confirmed in Texas
Dallas County health officials said the unidentified person had not traveled but had sex with a person who had returned from Venezuela and fallen ill with Zika, which has been linked to birth defects in the Americas. The virus is primarily spread through mosquito bites, but investigators had been exploring the possibility it could be sexually transmitted. There was a report of a Colorado researcher who picked up the virus in Africa and apparently spread it to his wife back home in 2008, and it was found in one man's semen in Tahiti.
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http://www.ctpost.com/news/texas/article/Dallas-County-confirms-sexually-transmitted-Zika-6801489.php
 
keep it zipped up elc. you're married now.
 
Awesome. The wife has really been pushing for nino numero dos and uno has me consistently broke and exhausted. I'm sure she'll listen to the WHO, right?
 
This is great, I'm going to post it all over my office.

#WHOin
#SuckitFMLA
#MaternityLeave=Death
 
Saw a pretty funny quote over the past week "Zika isn't anywhere close to how big the Ebola crisis was, but then again neither was the Ebola crisis."
 
More than 3,100 pregnant women in Colombia have Zika while Brazil is already dealing with more than 4,000 cases of microcephaly.
 
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