Is the Spread of Zika Virus Result of Scientists' Mistake?

• 02.03.2016, 14:52
•  World,  Info,  No-politics

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The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified the outbreak оf Zika virus as an emergency situation in health sphere at the international level, Interfax reports. WHO expects to examine 3.4 million cases of the virus in 2016 in the Americas and has expressed concern that it will soon spread across the planet.

Zika virus is a type of virus with the origin of Flavi virus, carried by mosquitoes of the genus "Aedes aegypti". Zika virus causes fatigue, headaches, conjunctivitis, skin rashes, fever and pain in muscles and joints. These symptoms persist in the infected within 2-7 days. A person infected with the virus, should rest, drink enough water and take medication against fever symptoms.

So far, Zika fever has been considered quite mild disease. Only one of  five people showed symptoms of the disease. Mortality was absent. Currently vaccines against this virus do not exist, the most effective method of prevention is the protection against insects.

The virus which got its name from Zika forest in Africa, the first time was identified in Uganda in 1947, after which during 60 years there have been only 15 cases of the disease in Africa and Southeast Asia. In the mid-1990s, during its first major outbreak, nearly 80 percent of the population has been infected in Micronesia and French Polynesia, "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" writes. It is noted that at that time the vast majority of infected were easily cured. Only very few residents had all the symptoms of the disease. In rare cases, the virus can cause Guillain-Barre syndrome, peripheral nerve damage, which can result in paralysis, which usually disappears within six to twelve months.

However, in Brazil, where a new outbreak was detected in May of last year, things have changed radically. There were cases of microcephaly among hundreds of newborn children - children were born with abnormally small head. Their mothers were infected during pregnancy. As a result Brazilian neuroscientists raised an alarm in October. The authorities in several countries, including Brazil and Colombia, advised women to postpone pregnancy until 2018.

Threatening even the unborn children, Zika virus appeared after a failed experiment in the laboratory – as offered by the British press. According to the assumptions, in the lab the scientists have deduced genetically modified mosquitoes that transmit the Zika virus. These mosquitoes were released into the wild in order to mate with females who are the carriers of ''dengue'' virus, they have an offspring that would have perished. But, as critics say, something went wrong. As a result, those millions of mosquitoes that were released to the nature in Brazil, gave the usual normal offspring, and now about a million people are infected in Brazil, radiovesti.ru reports.

As for Armenia, Zika virus will not be able to spread in our country, as the virus is not transmitted from person to person, and the species of mosquitoes that are the main carriers of the disease, do not exist here.