Zika Virus Triggers Pregnancy Delay Calls

Warning to Avoid Pregnancy – Severe Birth Defects

Four Latin American as well as Caribbean nations’ officials have warned women to avoid pregnancy due to apprehensions over an illness resulting in severe birth defects. Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador and Jamaica have been recommended to delay pregnancies till more details are provided regarding the mosquito borne Zika virus.

 The outbreak had spread to Brazil where it was reported that the number of babies born with suspected microcephaly or abnormally small heads had reached to almost 4,000 since October. In the meanwhile, US health authorities had cautioned pregnant women to refrain from travelling to more than 20 countries in the Americas and beyond where the cases of Zika had been registered.

The connection between microcephaly and Zika is not confirmed though a small number of infants who had died had the virus in their brain with no other explanation for the rush in microcephaly being recommended. The virus is said to be normal like flu symptoms and does not seem to be contagious. Health Minister of Columbia, Alejandro Gaviria has advised women to delay pregnancies for around eight months.

He has been quoted by Reuters that `we are doing this because I believe it’s a good way to communicate the risk, to tell people that there could be serious consequences’.

Spread through Aedes Aegypti Mosquito

Warnings had also been issued in Ecuador, El Salvador as well as Jamaica. But the women’s rights campaigners had disapproved the recommendation stating that women in the region often had little choice about getting pregnant.

Monica Roa, member of Women’s Link Worldwide group had commented that `it is incredibly naïve 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’. It is spread due to the Aedes aegypti mosquito that also tends to carry dengue fever as well as yellow fever. It has first been identified in Africa in the 1940s though is now spreading in Latin America.

Scientists are of the opinion that there seems to be an increased indication of a connection to microcephaly which tends to lead to babies born with small heads. Though this condition could lead to a rash and fever, several people tends to have no symptoms and the cure for the same is not known.

Warnings Issued to Several Countries

The only means of fighting Zika is by way of clearing stagnant water where mosquitoes tend to breed and to be careful of mosquito bites.

Brazil’s health ministry has informed that forty-nine babies suspected of microcephaly had died and in five of these cases the infection with Zika virus had been detected. Brazil has been subjected to the largest known outbreak of Zika and several of the cases is in the north-east while others have been identified in the south-east, which is an area comprising of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. There has been an increase in the cases of Zika in many other Latin American countries.

It has been reported that in Columbia there were over 13,500 cases. Besides, these countries, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention had issued initial travel warnings to pregnant women recently with the addition of more places to the list and the warnings are now extended to Central and South America:

Bolivia,Brazil,Columbia, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, and Venezuela, Caribbean: Barbados, Guadeloupe, SaintMartin, Haiti, Martinique and Puerto Rico, Oceania: Samoa and Africa: Cape Verde