GENEVA, 2 Feb. - (ANA) - The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Zika virus and its suspected link to birth defects an international public health emergency on Monday, a rare move that signals the seriousness of the outbreak and gives countries new tools to fight it.

At a news conference in Geneva, Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general of the W.H.O, acknowledged that the understanding of the connection between the Zika virus and microcephaly was hazy and said that the uncertainty placed “a heavy burden” on pregnant women and their families throughout the Americas. She said the emergency designation would allow the health agency to coordinate the many efforts to get desperately needed answers. Officials said research on the effects of Zika in pregnant women was underway in at least three countries: Brazil, Colombia and El Salvador.
“The evidence is growing and it’s getting strong,” Dr. Chan said. “So I accepted, even on microcephaly alone, that it is sufficient to call an emergency. We need a coordinated international response.”

An outbreak of the Zika virus, which is transmitted by mosquitoes, was detected in Brazil in May and has since moved into more than 20 countries in Latin America, including two new ones announced Monday in Costa Rica and Jamaica.

The main worry is over the virus’s possible link to microcephaly, a condition that causes babies to be born with unusually small heads and, in the vast majority of cases, damaged brains. Reported cases of microcephaly are rising sharply in Brazil, ground zero for the disease, though researchers have yet to establish that Zika causes the condition.

But the WHO stopped short of advising pregnant women not to travel to the affected region, a precaution that American health officials began recommending last month. Some global health experts contended the W.H.O.’s decision was more about politics than medicine. Brazil is preparing to host the Olympics this summer, and any ban on travel, even just for pregnant women, would deliver a serious blow to the Brazilian government.
The current outbreak of Zika has taken the world by surprise. The virus was first identified in 1947 in Uganda, and for years lived mostly in monkeys. But last May in Brazil, cases began increasing drastically. The W.H.O. has estimated that four million people could be infected by the end of the year. The rapid spread is because people in the Americas have not developed immunity, public health experts say. - (ANA) -

AB/ANA/ 2 February 2016 - - -