The CDC just issued a travel warning for pregnant women.
Felipe Dana / AP / Via apimages.com
On Friday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a somewhat alarming travel alert. "Out of an abundance of caution," the agency advised, women who are pregnant (or planning to be pregnant) should "consider postponing travel" to 14 regions in South and Central America — including Puerto Rico — because of the risk of contracting the Zika virus.
Transmitted by mosquitos, Zika causes fairly mild symptoms in adults, but has been linked to microcephaly, or an abnormally small head, in thousands of babies.
CDC scientists analyzed samples from two babies who had died in Brazil shortly after birth, both of whom had microcephaly, as well as from two pregnancies that ended in miscarriage. The scientists found the Zika virus in all four cases, and in the brains of the two full-term babies. All four mothers had had Zika-like symptoms during their pregnancies.
Where is Zika?
CDC / Via cdc.gov
Zika cases have been reported in dozens of countries throughout the world. But the current outbreak began in May of last year, in Brazil. Since then, Brazil health authorities have estimated somewhere between half a million and 1.5 million cases. Since October, the country has reported 3,500 cases of microcephaly in babies. It's not known how many of those were caused by Zika, but it's certainly a big increase: In 2014 Brazil reported just 147 microcephaly cases.
The virus is now showing up in 14 regions in South and Central America, according to the CDC: Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico.
Last week, health officials in Harris county, Texas, confirmed that a patient there had the virus, after traveling in Latin America. And on Friday, Hawaiian health officials reported the first case of a baby born in the U.S. with microcephaly whose mother had been infected with Zika. Since 2014, six Hawaiians have been infected with Zika, all after traveling to other countries.
via BuzzFeed - World http://ift.tt/1J99WBo
Put the internet to work for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment