Experts advise shifting Games

The Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro should be postponed or moved because of the risk from the Zika virus, more than 100 leading experts have said.

In an open letter to the World Health Organisation, 125 academics from institutions including Oxford University and Harvard and Yale in the US said new findings about the virus made it ‘‘unethical’’ to continue with the Games.

They said that Rio’s mosquito eradication programme had failed to slow the spread of the virus, and that continuing with plans to hold the 2016 summer Olympic and Paralympic Games there risked exacerbating public health emergency – and would result in more children being born with terrible deformities.

The letter will put more pressure on the International Olympic Committee and the organisers of Brazil’s Games, which start on August 5, as they try to assure tourists that it is safe to visit.

The international group of academics, three of whom are from Britain, include bioethicists, lawyers, and professors of medicine. They said continuing with the Games put athletes in the unacceptable position where they had to ‘‘choose between risking disease and participating in a competition that many have trained for their whole lives’’.

They added that the bigger concern was the spectators travelling in their thousands to Rio de Janeiro. ‘‘Our greater concern is for global health,’’ they write. ‘‘The Brazilian strain of Zika virus harms health in ways that science has not observed before.

‘‘An unnecessary risk is posed when 500,000 foreign tourists from all countries attend the Games, potentially acquire that strain, and return home to places where it can become endemic.

‘‘Should that happen to poor, asyet unaffected places [eg, most of South Asia and Africa] the suffering can be great. It is unethical to run the risk, just for Games that could proceed anyway, if postponed and/or moved.’’

TIMES