The Zika virus linked to a microcephaly outbreak in Latin America could spread to Africa and Asia, with the world’s highest birth rates, the WHO warned as it launched a global response unit against the new emergency.
The WHO on Monday declared an international public health emergency due to Zika’s link to thousands of recent birth defects in Brazil.
“We’ve now set up a global response unit which brings together all people across WHO, in headquarters, in the regions, to deal with a formal response using all the lessons we’ve learned from the Ebola crisis,” WHO Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health Director Anthony Costello said yesterday.
Photo: Reuters
“The reason it’s a global concern is that we are worried that this could also spread back to other areas of the world where the population may not be immune,” he told a news conference in Geneva.
“And we know that the mosquitos that carry Zika virus — if that association is confirmed — are present ... through Africa, parts of southern Europe and many parts of Asia, particularly South Asia,” he said.
Underlining his point, Thai officials yesterday announced that a man had contracted the virus in the kingdom.
Cape Verde, which lies off the coast of west Africa, has also already reported domestic Zika cases.
“Given that there is a vector, and given that we are in a global world, and presumably it crossed the Atlantic at some stage to get into Latin America, there is no reason particularly to think it couldn’t travel in the opposite direction,” Costello said.
He said the WHO was drafting “good guidelines” for pregnant women and mustering experts to work on a definition of microcephaly, including a standardized measurement of baby heads.
“We believe the association is guilty until proven innocent,” he said, referring to the connection drawn in Brazil between the Zika virus and microcephaly, a condition where babies are born with abnormally small heads.
“Mass community engagement” in areas with the mosquitos and their breeding grounds, and rapid development of diagnostic tools are essential to curbing the virus, as a vaccine may be years away, said Costello, who is a pediatrician and an expert on microcephaly.
Sanofi has launched a project to develop a vaccine against Zika, the most decisive commitment yet by a major vaccine producer to fight the disease.
Zika is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which also spreads dengue fever, and was first discovered in Uganda in 1947.
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan (陳馮富珍) on Monday told reporters that an international coordinated response was needed, although restrictions on travel or trade were not necessary.
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The Central Weather Administration (CWA) is set to issue sea and land warnings for Tropical Storm Krathon as projections showed that the tropical storm could strengthen into a typhoon as it approaches Taiwan proper, the CWA said yesterday. The sea warning is scheduled to take effect this morning and the land warning this evening, it said. The storm formed yesterday morning and in the evening reached a point 620 nautical miles (1,148km) southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, moving west-southwest at 4 kph as it strengthened, the CWA said. Its radius measured between 220km and 250km, it added. Krathon is projected
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