Men Who Were in Zika Areas Should Use Condoms — CDC

“Don’t kiss, obviously”, said Paulo Gadelha, head of the Fiocruz institute in Rio de Janeiro. However, its link to birth defects in babies whose mothers were infected sparked the World Health Organization to declare a public health emergency.

Women’s reproductive rights are a touchy subject in largely Catholic Latin America, but the United Nations human rights office said countries urging women to avoid pregnancy – a list that comprises Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Jamaica and Panama – had to give them ways to control their fertility.

“The Zika virus is transferred by mosquitoes that are not indigenous to the Mahoning valley, actually to OH”, said Mahoning County Health Commissioner Patricia Sweeney.

Blood banks around the world are asking donors to wait for several weeks after travelling to Zika-affected countries before giving blood.

“For us scientists, it’s extremely challenging to understand Zika virus“.

USA health officials say men who have visited an area with the Zika virus should use condoms if they have sex with a pregnant woman – for the entire duration of the pregnancy. Pregnant women should discuss their male partner’s potential exposures to mosquitoes and history of Zika-like illness (http://www.cdc.gov/zika/symptoms) with their health care provider; providers can consult CDC’s guidelines for evaluation and testing of pregnant women.

“We don’t know a lot about Zika”, Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a conference call on Friday. It’s also not known if a woman who is infected with Zika can spread the disease to a man through sex, the agency said.

The CDC issued an interim guideline for prevention of sexual transmission of the dises. Those with symptoms may experience fever, joint pain and a rash.

Non-pregnant couples involving travel to Zika-vulnerable areas are also advised to follow the same advice. “The relationship is not zika and abortion; it is microcephaly and abortion, ” he said.

“The projection is that we could end up having 600,000 cases”, Santos said, adding there could be up to 1,000 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare but serious condition that can cause paralysis and which some governments have linked to Zika infection.

Since November, Brazil has seen 404 confirmed cases of microcephaly in newborns.

Earlier this week, health officials in Brazil confirmed two cases of Zika virus in blood transfusions.

They are among the 25,645 cases reported nationwide so far, as the mosquito-borne disease continues to spread rapidly across the Americas.