Zika fever

In 1947, scientists who studied yellow fever performed a virological blood test at the height of a fever in one of the monkeys caught in the Zika forest (in the native language “Zika” literally means “thickets”) near the Virus Research Institute in Entebbe , Uganda . Scientists expected to detect the usual yellow fever virus, but the agent they isolated, although they belonged to flaviviruses, was not known before. Therefore, they described it as Zika virus. In 1952, in Uganda, Tanzania, and 1954 in Nigeria, the virus was isolated from humans. From the time it was discovered until 2007, confirmed cases of Zika virus infection in Africa and Southeast Asia have been rare. But in 2007, at first there was a large epidemic of the disease on the islands of Micronesia , and a little later, in Polynesia . The outbreak spread to the Cook Islands and New Caledonia ^[1] .

In 2016, the governments of several Latin American countries (for example, Jamaica , El Salvador , Colombia ) asked women to postpone pregnancy due to the outbreak of Zika fever in the region. Brazilian Minister of Health Marcelu Castro admitted that the country is not coping with the fight against the mosquito Aedes aegypti , the main carrier of the Zika virus , the number of infected which goes into an epidemic ^[2] . In Brazil, in particular, about 150 newborns with microcephaly were registered in 2014; in the next 2015, about 4000 were suspected of microcephaly ^[3] .

In Russia, the first case of infection was recorded on February 15, 2016 ^[4] . In November 2016, Rospotrebnadzor reported another 13 cases of importation of fever from Caribbean countries. The following case was reported on February 6, 2017 ^[5]

The source of infection and reservoir in the wild remain unknown. It is most likely that people are a source of infection at least during the acute manifestations of their disease. The transmission of the disease to other people is carried out in a transmissible way . It occurs through mosquito bites of the genus Aedes , most often of the species Aedes aegypti , in tropical and equatorial regions .

In addition, they assume a high degree of probability of vertical transmission . In 2009, the fact of sexual transmission of the virus from person to person was established ^[6] . The duration and strength of the immune system after a disease is not yet known exactly. The disease is dangerous due to the possibility of easy infection of travelers in the regions of Oceania and America .

During an epidemic in French Polynesia , 73 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome and other neurological diseases were detected among 270,000 people, which may be associated with Zika virus ^[7] . In December 2015, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control released a publication on the possible association of Zika virus with congenital microcephaly and Guillain – Barré syndrome ^[8] .

A relationship with microcephaly in newborns in infected mothers is currently considered likely ^[9] . The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that you take special security measures and reschedule trips to endemic regions if they are not urgently needed ^[10] .

According to data published on the website of the United Nations Children's Fund ( UNICEF ) on February 2, 2016, preliminary information on the possibility of developing microcephaly in the fetus of a pregnant woman infected with Zika virus is not officially confirmed. It also contains statistics on the detection of cases of microcephaly in newborns in Brazil: according to the fund for the period from October 22, 2015 to January 26, 2016 - 4180 cases were detected, while during 2014 - only 147 cases ^[11] .

• Zika outbreak in Latin America

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