Zika link to microcephaly proof soon: WHO

“We have a few more weeks to be sure to demonstrate causality, but the link between Zika and Guillain-Barre is highly probable,” Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO Assistant Director-General for Health Systems and Innovation, told reporters. She said it would take at least 18 months to start clinical trials on humans of candidate vaccines against Zika, adding, “Two vaccine candidates seem to be more advanced: a DNA vaccine from the U.S. National Institutes for Health, and an inactivated product from Bharat Biotech, in India.” 

A number of researchers in many countries are racing to find the vaccine, and  most say clinical availability of any Zika vaccine is still at least three years away. Castro and Pedro Vasconcelos, a doctor at the Evandro Chagas Institute of Infectious Diseases, announced the vaccine partnership with the U.S. researchers as Brazil pledged $1.9 million to the effort over the next five years.

Zika fatalities:  

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro said on Thursday that three people had died of complications linked to the mosquito-borne Zika virus and that suspected cases of Zika had risen to 5,221.  

Brazil said that three people who died last year had the Zika virus, although authorities could not confirm that Zika alone was responsible for their deaths. Only one in five people infected with Zika experience illness and even then they are normally mild symptoms. 

The virus is still poorly understood by scientists and no proof yet exists to show it causes the birth deformations or any reported deaths and the WHO is hoping to prove the link soon, as stated above.

Some 38 percent of U.S. multinationals, universities and non-profits surveyed by an arm of the State Department are allowing female employees to defer travel or leave countries where the Zika virus has been reported. 

A fifth of the 321 respondents said they were giving male employees similar options, a sign of how employers’ travel policies are diverging as they react to the mosquito-borne virus and uncertainty about the way it is transmitted.