Three UK travellers diagnosed with Zika virus

It is helping Brazil conduct a study this month to evaluate if any link exists between the condition and the Zika virus.

“This virus they first isolated in Uganda and it was relatively isolated to that hemisphere”. An individual becomes infected by the bite of an infected mosquito.

While the symptoms of Zika itself tend to be mild – they include joint pain and a rash – scientists believe it is linked to microcephaly, or abnormally small brains, in newborns. An estimated 80 percent of those infected show no symptoms at all.

So why is there so much concern? .

The brain condition can be deadly or cause intellectual disability and developmental delays.

Health officials in Jamaica, Colombia, Ecuador and El Salvador are now recommending anyone wanting on starting a family to delay their plans until 2018. But by 2015, as Zika spread, Brazilian officials registered 2,782 cases before the end of the year, according to the New York Times.

Fewer than 150 cases of microcephaly were seen in the country in all of 2014.

In north-east Brazil, there has been a marked increase in cases of newborn babies with microcephaly. The disorder can also cause numbness, trouble in walking or limb paralysis.

This week, Brazil’s health ministry said 49 deaths have been linked to microcephaly. “It’s incredibly naive for a government to ask women to postpone getting pregnant in a context such as Colombia, where more than 50% of pregnancies are unplanned and across the region where sexual violence is prevalent”, Women’s Link Worldwide member Monica Roa told the BBC. “Some people will pay attention to this and realize they are at risk for something, others are obviously going to ignore it”, he said. The message will probably change too as more is learned about the virus. “We don’t fully understand what’s going on”, Higgs said.

Brazil’s health ministry says there have been 3,893 suspected cases of microcephaly since October, when the authorities first noticed a surge, up from 3,500 in last week’s report.

Ways to suppress the disease focuses on mosquito bite prevention, such as using insecticides, special nets and screens.

“The only thing one can do right now is protect against being bitten by mosquitoes, and don’t travel to those areas, for now”, said Dr. Christopher Englert, director of ob/gyn at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck.

Originating in East Africa, Zika landed in Latin America past year and has spread across virtually the whole region via Aedes aegypti mosquitos, according to the Panamerican Health Organisation.

The virus grows in human blood and any other mosquito can then pick it up while biting and transmit it further. Both of those women were believed to have been infected while out of the country.

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