UPDATE: The World Health Organization has convened an emergency committee on Zika virus. It will meet on 1 February to decide whether Zika should be treated as a global emergency. The organisation expects âthree to four million cases of Zika virus diseaseâ in the Americas.
ANOTHER year, another emerging tropical disease. Zika virus, which has caused thousands of severe birth defects in Brazil, is fanning out across the western hemisphere and appears capable of invading nearly all countries in the Americas (see âThe rise of Zikaâ). Other continents could be next.
Until recently, the mosquito-borne virus caused sporadic human cases in parts of Africa and South-East Asia (see âDid Zikaâs recent mutations let it explode as a global threat?â). It now joins a roguesâ gallery of obscure viruses that have shot to global notoriety, including HIV, Ebola, SARS, West Nile, MERS, dengue and chikungunya.
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Given how often we find ourselves in this situation â and the near-certainty that we will find ourselves in it again â you would think that the public health response would be a well-oiled machine by now. But yet again we have been blindsided.
Zikaâs practice run in French Polynesia in 2013 should have been a warning. Its rampage across Brazil before spreading to a dozen other countries in the Americas has virologists frantically designing research, but there has been precious little public health response besides warnings to avoid pregnancy, mosquitoes or both. There is no sign of a crash programme to develop the most effective response of all â a vaccine.
The slow response to the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa was roundly and rightly criticised (see âUK Ebola failingâ). But the guardians of the worldâs public health ultimately redeemed themselves somewhat by creating, testing and distributing a vaccine in record time â albeit still a bit too late.
Zika isnât as dangerous as Ebola, but it isnât a virus to take lightly. Where is the effort to replicate the Ebola vaccine initiative for Zika? And looking down the line, how do we prepare for the next virus to come burbling out of an animal reservoir somewhere?
Yet again, a once-obscure emerging virus has gone halfway around the world before the health authorities have got their boots on. They can, and must, do better.
This article appeared in print under the headline âNot going viralâ
