The Union Health Ministry has recently sounded an alert for Zika Virus and issued health advisory after World Health Organisation (WHO) designated the virus and its suspected complications in newborns as a public health emergency of international concern.
To know more about the Zika Virus disease, which is transmitted through the bite of an infected Aedes mosquito —the same mosquito that is known to transmit infections like dengue and chikungunya — The Pioneer spoke to Dr lalit Dar top medical scientist in Virology Department of AIIMS about the emerging viral disease.
Zika Virus has spread widely in Brazil with more than 2,500 cases reported in 2015 infecting pregnant women with Zika due to which they delivered babies with microcephaly, an abnormally small head circumference (incomplete brain development). Interestingly, men are lucky in this case. They are just going to suffer from the mild illness like fever and body ache for few days.
Explaining about the clinical feature of dengue, chikungunya and Zika Virus, Dr lalit Dar who is also professor in Virology department, said, “In dengue, there is hemorrhagic fever while in chikungunya there is a risk of prolong joint pain which may be for a period of six months to one year and on the other hand, in Zika virus there can be fever and body ache only to the men with mild illness. And after that, they’ll be alright. However, to the pregnant women there can be a risk of microcephaly to the baby, but medical scientists yet to ascertain percentage risk of transmission of the virus from pregnant women to the baby and percentage that the baby will develop the microcephaly.”
As in HIV, it has been proved that about 20per cent of infection is transmitted from mother to the baby, so accordingly medication starts, Dr Dar added.
Dr Dar said, “Though Central Government has issued travel advisory urging pregnant women to defer or cancel their travel to Zika-hit areas, the medical scientists are yet to confirm mother-to-child infection as there are other factors which can lead to microcephaly, like environment factors, genetic factors.”
Saying that these factors have not been completely ruled out in the Brazilian data, Dr Dar added, “If there is some toxic chemical in the environment which happens to get into mother due to air and water pollution or even effluent from factory which can reach to the mother and then to the baby.”
It may be noted that ades mosquito are known as ‘Urban and sophisticated mosquito” lives around houses and precautions are the same as dengue, chikungunya and Zika Virus such as not to keep standing water for long time. If a man is travelling to Zika-hit country, then he should take proper precaution such as applying mosquito repellant cream and lotion on regular basis.
While India is a risk of Zika Virus, due to the presence of dengue, however, as of now there is no case of Zika in the country. “National institute of Virology, (NIV) Pune has studied the previous cases of last year which had dengue like symptoms and they have no isolated Zika case from previous year’s cases which were similar in their clinical presentation,” said Dr Dar, adding that ongoing fever survillance is being done.
It may be noted that in the late 1940’s Zika started to spread in Africa with an outbreak in Uganda. later it spread to South East Asia and Pacific islands but it reached to South America in couple of years back with cases in Mexico and Brazil.