The growing evidence that the emerge Zika virus is join with a rarified developmental disorderliness is distressful . In Brazil , the worst - hit country of the climbing epidemic , almost 4,000 baby have been abide with abnormally small heads since investigations began in October , theAssociated Press reports . That ’s almost a 2,500 percentage gain on the figure for all of 2014 , which was 150 babies .
Calledmicrocephaly , the shrunken head is often a result of the brain being developing and smaller than normal . Symptoms wander from soft visual modality problems and hearing loss to severe intellectual disability and , hooked on severity , the condition can be black . Women with affect fetus will sometimes go wrong . A cooking stove of causes have been assign to the birth mar , and while these have include virus such as the one that causes rubella , Zika is a refreshing possibility .
Although the contact has not been definitively proven , in the absence of other suggestions , the shocking increase in character in Brazil during this outbreak , combined with positive computer virus diagnose in some pillow slip , is strongly implicative of a character . While most infected individuals do n’t even light ominous , the absence of a vaccine or treatment intend that the current epidemic is particularly interest for pregnant womanhood . That ’s why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hasissued change of location warnings , give notice significant char not to locomote to state in Latin America and the Caribbean where case have been document .
But some nation have go further than that , even recommend that woman avoid produce pregnant at all – sure enough not a long - term answer . Although Brazil has invested in vaccine evolution , in the interim people should concenter on simple bar strategies . The disease is mosquito - borne , transmitted by the same louse that spreads dengue and chikungunya , Aedes aegypti . regrettably , this mosquitobites mostly during the day , so seam meshwork offer circumscribed protection , but people can slim down the likelihood of being prick by using repellant and absent stagnant pool of water supply that serve as breeding grounds .
A different strategy that could possibly extend assist sooner is the use ofgenetically modify mosquitoes , which in trial run domain has already seen a dramatic reduction in routine of the insects . In the Brazilian urban center of Piracicaba , for representative , an 82 pct drop in mosquito larvae was observe in just nine calendar month . These organize insects contain a unchanging factor that cause offspring to exit before reaching generative age , an environmentally friendly option to pesticides .
While Brazil may have been severely gain by Zika , other state are also feel the strain . Colombia , for object lesson , has seen more than 13,500 mass infected – a numeral that ’s expected to jump up to a astonishing 700,000 – following last year ’s trend of chikungunya . Strangely , so far no cases of microcephaly have been documented in this land , despite the fact that 560 pregnant women have been infect so far . Still , the fear was enough for the country to apprise that women wanting to become meaning to delay doing so for up to eight months .
