microcephaly - Page 3

President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil delivered a national primetime address on Wednesday night on the Zika virus pandemic that has hit the South American nation with particular severity, detailing how the Brazilian military has begun awareness and fumigation operations nationwide.

If Zika–or a possibly mutated strain–can also spread through sex, then it poses a risk of another HIV/Aids pandemic.

Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston are trying to find out how to control the spread of the Zika virus, and they hope to later develop a vaccine. Their work is a coordinated effort with researchers in other countries, like Brazil, to help further control of the virus.

Brazilian celebrity doctor Varella Varella claimed officials have banned abortion to punish poor mothers. Fear of microcephaly due to Zika and a leftist pro-abortion campaign have resulted in a spike in dangerous illegal abortions in Brazil.

The Health Ministry of Brazil has requested that American virologists travel to Zika-affected areas and hold high-level meetings with their medical experts, as they collaborate to find a vaccine to prevent the disease from spreading further.

A 24-year-old Brazilian journalist says she is a “fulfilled, happy woman” despite her lifelong struggle with microcephaly, and that she has “taken personally” the promotion of abortions in cases like hers from leftist groups, following the discovery of a link between microcephaly and the pervasive Zika virus.

On Monday, California health officials admitted that six people in California who contracted the disease abroad have been diagnosed with the Zika virus since 2013.

The World Health Organization has declared the Zika virus a public health emergency due to the thousands of cases of the virus linked to birth defects in newborn children.

Fear of microcephaly or other complications due to Zika have pushed women to illegal abortions, according to the Brazilian daily Folha de São Paulo.

Jamaican authorities, in response to the mosquito-borne Zika virus, are urging young women to delay becoming pregnant for the next six to 12 months, but their advice is falling on deaf ears.

The government of Colombia has announced that the Zika virus has infected more than 2,100 pregnant women, doubling the cases in over a week.

Virologist Gubio Soares, who first identified the presence of the pervasive Zika virus in Brazil, suggested that legalized abortion in French Polynesia may have prevented scientists from uncovering a link between Zika and severe infant deformities sooner.

Growing numbers of wealthy Brazilian women are leaving the country to protect their unborn children from the Zika virus.

The National Institutes of Health confirmed that the Zika virus outbreak has reached pandemic levels in Latin America.

Brazilian judge Jesseir Coelho de Alcantara has declared he will approve abortions for women who have contracted Zika and can prove their unborn child has microcephaly or ancenephaly. In Brazil, abortions are only legal with judicial approval.

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned this week that the Zika virus in Latin America has “explosive pandemic potential.” Patients often experience mild symptoms with Zika, but pregnant women face a larger danger.

Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, is calling an emergency meeting of the Latin American trade bloc Mercosur over the rapid spread of the Zika virus. As the virus spreads throughout the hemisphere, a Mercosur meeting indicates Brazil’s concern for the economic repercussions of such an outbreak as much as the medical ones.

As Latin America’s Zika outbreak continues to spread, the United States is rejecting blood donations from individuals traveling to countries affected by the Zika virus, while the Canadian government considers similar action.

Brazil authorities ordered health workers to sterilize Rio de Janeiro’s Sambadrome, which will serve as the center of the 2016 Summer Olympics, over the fear of the Zika virus.

More than 3,000 infants in Brazil have been diagnosed with brain deformities believed to have been triggered by the Zika virus, a disease similar to dengue fever that has become increasingly common as the Southern Hemisphere’s summer wears on.