International experts, including World Health Organisation chief Margaret Chan, are visiting Brazil this week and next to check out a major increase in Zika virus infections, which have been blamed fo
International experts, including World Health Organisation chief Margaret Chan, are visiting Brazil this week and next to check out a major increase in Zika virus infections, which have been blamed for birth defects.
Ms Chan, whose organisation has declared an international emergency over the mosquito-transmitted virus, is expected in Brazil on February 23-24.
Experts from the US Centers for Disease Control are already in the country and officials from two other US bodies, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, are due to arrive, the Brazilian health ministry said.
Zika often has few symptoms, but Brazilian scientists say they have found a direct link between the virus and a serious birth defect called microcephaly in babies born to women who were infected while pregnant.
There is no vaccine for Zika and cases have shot up across Brazil and much else of the region, raising fears for local people and visitors, including during the August Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Brazilian authorities have launched a national campaign against the Aedes aegypti mosquito which carries the virus. Military personnel have reinforced health authorities in a door to door campaign against mosquito breeding spots.
“We have a very effective fumigation campaign across Brazil,” health minister Marcelo Castro said Tuesday after meeting 24 EU ambassadors in the capital Brasilia.
“As happened in previous years, we hope that the mosquito population will be even lower,” he said, noting that by the Olympics the southern hemisphere winter will see a sharp drop in mosquito numbers.
The European Union delegation head to Brazil, Joao Gomes Cravinho, said: “The international community has many worries over Zika.”
Meanwhile, the WHO said on Wednesday that $56 million were needed to combat the Zika virus until June, including for the fast-tracking of vaccines, diagnostics and research studies into how it spreads.
The funds, including $25 million for the WHO and its regional office, would also be used to control the mosquito-borne virus that has spread to 39 countries, including 34 in the Americas, and has been linked to birth defects in Brazil.
“Possible links with neurological complications and birth malformations have rapidly changed the risk profile for Zika from a mild threat to one of very serious proportions,” Ms Chan said in a WHO meeting.
Strategic Response Framework and Joint Operations Plan issued in Geneva.
The WHO expects the funds to come from member states and other donors and said that in the meantime it has tapped a new emergency contingency fund for $2 million to finance its initial operations.
Chan will travel to Brazil from Feb 22-24 to review Zika-related measures supported by WHO and will meet the health minister, a WHO spokeswoman said.
The United Nations health agency declared the Zika outbreak a global public health emergency on Feb 1, noting its association with two neurological disorders, microcephaly in babies and Guillain-Barre syndrome that can cause paralysis.
Brazil is investigating the potential link between Zika infections and more than 4,300 suspected cases of microcephaly, a condition marked by abnormally small head size that can result in developmental problems.
Researchers have confirmed more than 460 of these cases as microcephaly and identified evidence of Zika infection in 41 of these cases, but have not proven that Zika can cause microcephaly.
The WHO noted that “existing scarce evidence indicates that there may be a risk of sexual transmission” of Zika virus, as well as a risk of it persisting in semen and urine.
“There is currently very little evidence of mother-to-child transmission; however, intra-uterine infections seem to be associated with subsequent neurological conditions in the child.”
