Zika emergency over, says WHO
THERAPY WORRYING: UN health agency’s announcement will cause govts, donors to scale back response, says expert
The World Health Organisation on Friday announced that the Zika virus outbreak, linked to deformations in babies’ heads and brains, no longer poses a world public health emergency, though it warned the epidemic remains a challenge.
Brazil, the epicentre of the outbreak, has, however, refused to downgrade the risk, while experts swiftly lashed out at the world health body’s decision.
“The Zika virus remains a highly significant and long-term problem,
forming part of the art piece which began after the US presidential election, but it is not any more a public health emergency of international concern,” WHO emergency committee chairman Dr David Heymann said.
While Zika causes only mild symptoms in most people, pregnant women with the virus risk giving birth to babies with microcephaly — a deformation that leads to abnormally small brains and heads.
It can also cause rare adult-onset neurological problems such as Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which can result in paralysis and death.
In the outbreak that began in the middle of last year, more than 1.5 million people have been infected at the Union Square subway station in New York on Thursday. ‘Subway Therapy’,
AFP pic with Zika, mainly in Brazil. More than 1,600 babies have been born with microcephaly since last year, according to WHO.
The UN’s global health agency declared the Zika epidemic a global health emergency in February.
Researchers earlier this year warned that at least 2.6 billion people (over a third of the global population) live in parts of Africa, Asia and the Pacific where Zika could gain a new foothold, with 1.2 billion at risk in India alone.
Brazil on Friday said it would continue to treat the outbreak as an emergency.
“We will maintain the emergency (status) in Brazil until we are completely tranquil about the situation,” Health Minister Ricardo Barros said.
In most cases worldwide, people have been infected with the virus by mosquitoes, though some have contracted the disease through sexual contact.
WHO was careful on Friday not to dismiss the risk still posed by the virus, which has been detected in 73 countries worldwide, mainly in Latin America and the Caribbean.
“We are not downgrading the importance of Zika. In fact, by placing this as a longer-term work programme, we’re sending the message that Zika is here to stay and WHO’s response is here to stay in a very robust manner,” said Dr Peter Salama, director of the agency’s health emergencies programme.
There are, he added, “a lot of unknowns” in the battle against Zika.
WHO believes the “Zika virus and associated consequences remain a significant enduring public health challenge requiring intense action but no longer represent” a global health emergency, it said in a statement.
“Many aspects of this disease and associated consequences still remain to be understood, but this can best be done through sustained research,” it added.
Washington’s Georgetown University global health and law expert Lawrence Gostin described the WHO decision as “quite worrying”, particularly since the southern hemisphere would soon enter the high-risk season for mosquitoes.
“The international response to Zika has been lethargic. WHO’s action to call off the global emergency has provided reason for governments and donors to pull back even more,” Gostin said.
“That is a recipe for the lack of preparedness the world has seen time and again with infectious diseases.” AFP