Zika Prompts Pleas for DDT
The World Health Organization (WHO) has sparked a global scare over a tropical virus outbreak that officials say is worse than last year’s Ebola epidemic, which killed 11,000 people in Africa. They predict the Zika virus could infect as many as four million people by the end of 2016. “Last year, the virus was detected in the Americas, where it is now spreading explosively,” warned WHO Director-General Margaret Chan in January. She told her executive board in Geneva that the “level of alarm is extremely high,” and on February 1 declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.
For decades, the disease mainly affected monkeys, deriving its name from the Zika forest of Uganda, where the virus was first discovered in 1947 in a rhesus monkey. Eventually it spread to humans, but never before in great numbers. “Today the situation is dramatically different,” explains Chan, because in fewer than 10 months Zika, first reported in Brazil in May, spread to more than 20 countries.
Zika victims are typically asymptomatic. One in five suffers a rash, conjunctivitis (pink eye), and/or flu-like symptoms of fever and joint pain. They normally recover within a week or two. So why all the panic? The virus is known to spread from a mother to her unborn child, and an alarming rise in birth defects and neurological disorders has accompanied the current outbreak. Chan said that WHO “strongly suspect[s]” a causal relationship between Zika virus and these problems, though a link has not been proven.
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