Zika virus: WHO holds emergency meeting today, as German scientists develop detection test

THE Director General of the World Health Organisation, WHO, Dr. Margaret Chan, is convening an International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on Zika virus today in Geneva, Switzerland, to ascertain whether the Zika virus outbreak constitutes a public health emergency of international concern.

The committee is meeting even as German researchers say they have developed a diagnostic test that can accurately detect the Zika virus in humans. Previously, there was no way to diagnose the illness apart from appearance of the distinctive symptoms.
A mosquito-borne illness, Zika virus disease has been in the news due to a suspected relationship between infection in pregnant women and birth defects, including microcephaly, a rare birth defect that stunts the growth of a baby’s brain and head. Many children with microcephaly have some degree of mental disability, and the condition is linked to a shorter life span.

Briefing the WHO Executive board during its 138th session, Chan desspcau the level of alarm as extremely high.
The Director General noted that WHO is generally worried about the rapidly evolving situation and decisions are expected to be taken at the meeting to step up international efforts to fight the threat.
The Zika virus has been tied to severe birth defects, including babies born with brain damage to infected mothers. There is no vaccine that can prevent the infection and very few tests available to detect it.
Worse still, people in most countries have never been exposed to the virus before, so there’s very little natural immunity to the virus in the general population.
The mosquito that carries the Zika virus, the Aedes aegypti mosquito, is the same mosquito that spreads the Chugwuniya fever and the Yellow fever diseases, and is found in most parts of the world including Nigeria. A species of the same mosquito carries Dengue fever.