WHO: Pregnant women must avoid Zika-hit areas

The World Health Organisation on Tuesday advised pregnant women not to travel to areas affected by the Zika virus outbreak, saying the new advice was issued amid mounting evidence that Zika can cause birth defects.

“Pregnant women should be advised not travel to areas of ongoing Zika virus outbreaks,” the UN agency said in a statement released after an emergency committee meeting on the rapid spread of the mosquito-borne virus.

Previous WHO guidelines issued after the first Zika emergency committee meeting on February 1 called for women to be warned of the risk of travel.

WHO chief Margaret Chan noted that link between Zika and microcephaly, a severe deformation of the brain among newborns, has not yet been definitively proven.

But, she said, “we do not have to wait until we have definitive proof” before advising pregnant women against travel.

“Microcephaly is now only one of several documented birth abnormalities associated with Zika infection during pregnancy,” she said.

“Grave outcomes include foetal death, placental insufficiency, foetal growth retardation, and injury to the central nervous system,” she added.

Despite the new travel guidelines for pregnant women, WHO said “there should be no general restrictions on travel or trade with countries (or) areas...with Zika virus transmission.”

Meanwhile, in a first, a 15-year-old girl infected with the Zika virus was diagnosed with a paralysis-causing myelitis by French researchers.

This is the first case of acute myelitis — inflammation of the spinal cord - following infection with Zika virus to be reported, according to a research team from the Pointe-a-Pitre University Hospital and the University of the Antilles in French West Indies.

A young patient in the acute phase of an infection by Zika virus presented motor deficiency in the 4 limbs, associated with very intense pain and acute urinary retention.

The presence of the virus was confirmed in the cerebrospinal fluid, blood and urine, researchers said.

In January this year, the girl was admitted to the Pointe-a-Pitre University Hospital in Guadeloupe, with left-side hemiplegia.

She showed urinary retention on her second day in hospital. The hemiplegia (paralysis of one side of the body) and pain became worse and the doctors recorded a loss of sensation in the legs, the researchers said.

They detected high concentrations of Zika virus in the serum and cerebrospinal fluid on the second day after admission - 9 days after the symptoms began. Tests for shingles, chickenpox, herpes virus, legionellosis and mycoplasma pneumonia were negative.