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

Good opportunity to travel to Brazil. $450 non-stop round trip from JFK in March and April which is about $600 less than usual.
 
Albert Ko, an epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at the Yale University School of Public Health, has been studying Zika virus and its link to birth defects in newborns in Brazil.
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What else are you finding?

It seems like microcephaly may just be the tip of the iceberg. The preliminary evidence is that [some] babies who don’t have microcephaly may also have neurological lesions or birth defects that are not as obvious as microcephaly. We’re really concerned because of Zika, but we need to rule out other causes of congenital infection to really make sure.

How are the parents and families handling the stress and anxiety?

Obviously there’s a large amount of fear, especially among pregnant women. … For many people, the level of anxiety is extremely great. People want a birth. It’s one of the greatest pleasures or expressions of love in a person’s life. …

For many of the families, it really hasn’t hit yet what the future is going to be. Not all the brains are severely compromised. Some of the babies, now one month or two months old, they’re feeding, they’re growing.

There is a wide mix of emotions. Some families are in denial. Some are just devastated. All of the physicians are just feeling the enormous weight of seeing this unfold, the uncertainty of what has caused this and what the future holds for these babies. There’s a strange heaviness across all the physicians.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/02/09/zika-expert-microcephaly-may-just-be-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/
 
The "lamestream posting" deserves every ounce of criticism it gets and more. It's misinfotainment, meant to be consumed by morons. When he do post serious issues, the posts are rarely substantive. Not all of it of course, but much of it. And the posts are often representing one side, like someone has an agenda.


Colombia: 3,177 Pregnant Women With Zika; No Microcephaly

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSFEB. 6, 2016, 5:15 P.M. E.S.T.

BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos said Saturday that there's no evidence Zika has caused any cases of the birth defect known as microcephaly in his country, though it has diagnosed 3,177 pregnant women with the virus.

Santos also announced that a U.S. medical-scientific team will arrive in Colombia to help investigate the mosquito-borne virus.

Brazilian officials say they suspect Zika is behind a seemingly unusual number of microcephaly cases, in which children are born with unusually small heads. The link is not confirmed, but it has helped prompt the World Health Organization to declare an emergency over the virus.

Santos says Zika apparently has affected more than 25,600 Colombians overall.

Colombian officials said Friday that three people had died of the paralyzing Guillain-Barre syndrome they attributed to cases of Zika.

To date, the mosquito-borne virus has spread to more than 20 countries in the Americas.

With global concern over the Zika virus growing, health officials are warning pregnant women to be careful about who they kiss and calling on men to use condoms with pregnant partners if they have visited countries where the virus is present.

The flurry of recommendations began in Brazil, where a top health official said that scientists have found live virus in saliva and urine samples, and the possibility it could be spread by the two body fluids requires further study.
 
'Everyone is catching it': Venezuelans fear the worst as Zika infections rise
The numbers infected with the Zika virus could be as high as 400,000 say experts, and medicine is in short supply as the country’s recession takes a toll
You can spot them by their warm winter clothes, despite the tropical heat. Inside a dingy public health clinic in the Libertador municipality of Caracas, half a dozen people are waiting to find out if they have the Zika virus.

“It’s the chills that are the worst,” says Angy, 21. She displays a scarlet rash on both her upper arms. Alongside her, her mother, Belkis Carillo, a nurse, needs no convincing. “Everyone is catching it,” she says. “My sister, my cousin, my nephew. They’ve all had it.”
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Back at the Concepción Palacios hospital, another woman, Karelys Pulgar, holds her belly. She is pregnant with her sixth child, and says she is praying everything will be OK. And, in the absence of any other option, she has started her own low-tech routine. She burns empty egg cartons inside her home. “The smoke scares off the mosquitoes, I hope,” she says.
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/10/venezuela-zika-virus-infections-rise-recession
 
CDC investigating 14 potential cases of sexually transmitted Zika
Federal and state health officials are investigating 14 new reports of potential sexual transmission of the Zika virus, including several cases involving pregnant women, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention disclosed Tuesday.

In at least two of these U.S. cases, infection was confirmed in women whose only known risk factor was sexual contact with an ill male partner who recently had returned from one of the approximately three dozen countries where the virus has now spread. Four other women have tested positive for Zika in preliminary lab tests but are awaiting final confirmation. The CDC said the eight other cases remain under investigation.

"We were surprised, given the numbers actively being investigated," said CDC Deputy Director Anne Schuchat. "We were concerned enough that we thought it was important to share that information. ... We are seeing more than we expected to see."
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Both the CDC and the World Health Organization have issued guidelines urging the use of condoms to prevent the spread of the virus, particularly when a woman is pregnant or might become pregnant. Officials also have recommended couples consider abstaining from sex for the duration of a pregnancy if the male partner has recently visited a Zika-affected country.

The CDC on Tuesday reiterated those recommendations, saying that "these new reports suggest sexual transmission may be a more likely means of transmission for Zika virus than previously considered." The agency also has advised women who are pregnant or plan to become so to avoid traveling to Zika-affected areas.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/02/23/cdc-investigating-14-new-potential-cases-of-sexually-transmitted-zika/
 
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Zika DOES NOT Justify Contraception, Says Catholic Bioethics Center
Direct abortion and contraceptive acts are intrinsically immoral and contrary to these great goods, and no circumstances can justify either.

Based on available information, it does not appear that Zika poses any particular threat to the life of a pregnant woman who contracts it. Although the association is not yet confirmed, the virus’s harmful effects appear to be on the development of the child in her womb. Proposing abortion as a “medical solution” to the child’s pathology is suggesting the direct destruction of innocent human life as a means of healing.
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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithonthecouch/2016/02/zika-does-not-justify-contraception-says-catholic-bioethics-center/?ref_widget=gr_trending&ref_blog=grails&ref_post=catholic&repeat=w3tc
 
U.S. details 9 Zika pregnancies: 2 abortions, 2 miscarriages, 1 baby with ‘severe microcephaly’
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At least two pregnant women in the United States infected with the Zika virus have chosen to have abortions in recent months, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday, while two others have suffered miscarriages. One woman gave birth to an infant with serious birth defects, while two others delivered healthy infants. Two are still pregnant.
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One of the women who had an abortion was in her 30s and had contracted the virus during her first trimester while traveling to a Zika-affected area, the agency said. When she was 20 weeks pregnant, she learned from an ultrasound that her fetus was suffering from severe brain abnormalities. Doctors also tested her amniotic fluid and found the presence of Zika virus. "After discussion with her health-care providers, the patient elected to terminate her pregnancy," the CDC wrote in a case study released Friday. Officials did not offer details surrounding the second abortion, other than to say it involved another woman who had become infected with Zika during the first trimester of her pregnancy.
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Throughout Latin America, home to some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, there have been controversial calls to lighten restrictions on the practice in the face of the Zika virus outbreak. In El Salvador, where abortion is banned, the health minister has argued for a revision of the law because of the dangers the virus poses to fetal development. In Colombia and Brazil, there have been efforts to lift certain restrictions on abortions as the virus has spread explosively through the continent, but those efforts have encountered stiff opposition, particularly from religious authorities.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/02/26/after-zika-diagnosis-at-least-two-u-s-women-chose-to-have-abortions-cdc-says/
 
Puerto Rico Braces for Its Own Zika Epidemic
A quarter of the island’s 3.5 million people will probably get the Zika virus within a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and eventually 80 percent or more may be infected.

“I’m very concerned,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the C.D.C. director, said in an interview after a recent three-day visit to Puerto Rico. “There could be thousands of infections of pregnant women this year.”
The epidemic is unfolding in one of the country’s most popular vacation destinations, where planes and cruise ships disembark thousands of tourists daily. Anyone could carry the virus back home, seeding a mosquito-borne outbreak or transmitting it sexually.

Health officials here have begun intensive efforts to stop the virus, which has been linked to abnormally small heads and brain damage in babies born to infected mothers, and to paralysis in adults.
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Many of the island’s hundreds of schools have no screens or air-conditioning. Since high school girls account for about 20 percent of all pregnancies here, officials plan to screen the windows to keep out mosquitoes.

That alone is a big job. “That means measuring each window,” Dr. Rullán said. “And what are you going to do about doors if you have 50 kids running in and out?”

As a first step, the public school dress code has been changed so girls can wear pants, and teachers are supposed to give mosquito repellent to all girls.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/health/zika-virus-puerto-rico.html?recp=19&_r=0
 
BBC report on conditions in Venezuela. Doctor estimates they're looking at 400,000 cases of Zika.
 
The New York Times ‏@nytimes 17m17 minutes ago

Zika virus can be transmitted through anal sex, the CDC says
 
On a serious note, should I be remotely concerned at all if my wife and I have talked about trying to have kids pretty soon?
 
Where do you live? Most likely the mosquitoes that transmit Zika aren't in your area. Overall mosquito controls in the US are vastly superior to all of our southern neighbors as well so even if present transmission rates would be way down. The anal sex thing is amusing since for some reason people think that since its not "real sex" that its safer, there's a reason why MSM transmission of HIV is so high, all those anal micro tears.
 
ThinkingWithMyDeac said:
Where do you live? Most likely the mosquitoes that transmit Zika aren't in your area. Overall mosquito controls in the US are vastly superior to all of our southern neighbors as well so even if present transmission rates would be way down. The anal sex thing is amusing since for some reason people think that since its not "real sex" that its safer, there's a reason why MSM transmission of HIV is so high, all those anal micro tears.
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NC
 
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