Outbreak of Zika virus demands global response

As an estimated 200,000 Americans prepare to compete in or attend the 31st Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro this year, an unwelcome visitor has cast a pall over preparations for the world- acclaimed Games.

That intruder, the Zika virus transmitted via bites from the Aedes aegypti mosquito, has rapidly morphed into an epidemic centered primarily in Central and South America with Brazil as its vortex. As many as 1.5 million people in that nation already are believed to have been infected with no vaccine or viable treatment available to halt or slow its rapid and insipid spread.

World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan put the Western Hemisphere on high alert this week, noting the virus is “spreading explosively” in the Americas. As a result, a committee of the WHO will convene in emergency session Monday to brainstorm an action plan to fight the virus and possibly declare it an international health emergency. Health leaders in the United States and around the globe should support that and other initiatives to reign in the virus and prevent it from becoming a global pandemic.

ABOUT THE VIRUS

Even though the virus has never been known to be deadly by itself, respected medical authorities link it to skyrocketing cases of microcephaly, a birth defect that produces abnormally small skulls in the heads of newborns. Other medical authorities believe it has played a role in inducing Guillain-Barr syndrome, a neurological disorder that can lead to total paralysis.

According to the authoritative international medical journal The Lancet, the Zika virus, first detected in Africa in 1947, could be following in the footsteps of dengue and chikungunya, which are also transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. Given the rapid-fire spread of Zika, global leaders are wise to develop viable strategies to prevent, discover and respond to it.

Some medical authorities fear the virus will spread to the southern United States by spring so from our perspective, there’s no time to waste.

For starters, pregnant American women should avoid visiting any of the 23 countries WHO has identified as breeding grounds for Zika. If they already have visited them in the recent past, they should see a doctor to determine if testing is required.

For its part, Brazil thus far has responded with due diligence. Its government is coordinating a national campaign of mosquito eradication with house-to-house searches to eliminate stagnant water where the pests breed. It has also dispatched teams of thousands of exterminators.

We suspect those efforts will continue aggressively as the largest nation of South America has a compelling reason to do so – to ward off any calls for relocating the Games after billions of dollars have been invested in preparations for the quadrennial Olympics spectacle.

At this point, such calls would seem premature. A more appropriate response would be for health leaders to work feverishly to minimize the likelihood for infection before the Games begin. Then visitors to Rio and other areas of potential Zika attacks should follow a strict regimen of preventive safeguards, caution and responsibility.