Margaret Chan, director-general of the WHO, discusses Zika last week (Image: Martial Trezzini/AP/PA)
It鈥檚 official: Zika is a global public health emergency, says the World 午夜福利1000集合 Organization.
The declaration means that the organisation can now officially take the lead in coordinating the global response to a virus it thinks could infect up to 4 million people in the Americas over the next year.
“I am declaring that recent cases of microcephaly and neurological abnormalities聽constitute a public health emergency of international concern,”聽said Margaret Chan, director-general of the WHO, at a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, tonight.
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A coordinated international response is needed to intensify the control of mosquito聽populations and聽expedite the development of vaccines, she said.聽The lack of vaccine and rapid reliable diagnostic tests was聽also cause for concern, she added.
Zika, which was first detected on the continent in May, has now spread 鈥渆xplosively鈥 to more than 23 countries in the region. Alarm over its link to birth defects such as microcephaly prompted the WHO to consider a global response.
Coordinated response
The WHO last declared a global emergency on August 2014, during the Ebola pandemic, but was subsequently criticised for failing to acknowledge the gravity of the situation sooner.
The emergency designation will allow the WHO to access funds to escalate research efforts and organise international efforts to combat the Aedes mosquitos that spread the disease.
“We need a coordinated international response to get to the bottom of this,” said Chan. “The mosquito that spreads it is ubiquitous in many countries. It鈥檚 incumbent for us to work with those countries and to be on the alert for new clusters.”
Chan said that more work was needed to聽find if there is a definitive link between the virus and the symptoms and that studies will begin in the next two weeks. She stressed that it was important to聽introduce protective measures of the sort that help people also avoid diseases such as dengue.
“Can you imagine if we don鈥檛 do all this work now and wait till the science is settled, people will say why didn鈥檛 we act,” she said.
Olympic fears
Although the committee said there were to be no聽restrictions on trade or travel, 聽it is likely that many will be concerned about the impact on this year’s Rio Olympics.
The event聽could see Zika spread further around the world as visitors who acquire the infection return to countries where聽Aedes聽mosquitoes聽are present, seeding another outbreak.
Mario Andrada, the communications director of Rio 2016 ,聽 that organisers have been scouring Olympics venues every day for two weeks, looking for standing water where mosquitoes breed. The inspections would continue daily until the games open on 5 August, he said.
One small blessing is that this will be in Brazil’s winter when it’s cooler, drier and the mosquito population is smaller.
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