A Devestating Virus Forces Doctors In Brazil To Tell Women: Don't Get Pregnant

Brazilian Health authorities are scrambling to deal with thousands of infants being born with damaged brains that'll plague them for the rest of their lives. 

And now they're telling women to avoid getting pregnant.

There have been more than 2,400 suspected cases of newborn microcephaly, a neurological disorder which causes incomplete brain development, shrunken skulls and even death. In 2014, only 147 cases were reported in Brazil so the massive spike in cases this year is deeply alarming to doctors.

"At this moment of uncertainty, if families can put off their pregnancy plans, that's what we're recommending," Angela Rocha, the pediatric infectologist at Oswaldo Cruz Hospital in Brazil's hardest-hit state told CNN. The Health Ministry called the situation "unprecedented."

This virus is called Zika (it's similar to the West Nile virus) and it was first discovered in Africa more than 70 years ago. From Uganda it spread to the south Pacific, then Asia and most recently to Latin America.

Why Brazil now?

On November 28, during an autopsy of a child, doctors determined it had microcephaly or a shrunken skull — one of the conditions associated with Zika virus. It's at that point that a wider net was cast and doctors started finding the virus in the amniotic fluid of two mothers whose babies had microcephaly too. 

If the baby develops the disease it will mean a lifelong physical and mental struggle for the child. So that's why doctors are strongly urging women not to get pregnant and inflict the disease on the fetus. The symptoms during pregnancy are mild fever, rash and headaches.

The aedes aegypti mosquito is one of the carriers of the Zika virus

The warning for women comes from the fact that 29 infants have died from what complications from the virus.

The increase of cases of microcephaly started to soar last month. And what initially started as a disease in northeastern Brazil has spread to Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in the south. Right now, doctors are trying to verify the link between the disease and the prevalence of the Zika virus in the population.

The virus was first detected in Brazil earlier this year and some doctors are even suggesting that tourists from Asia or the South Pacific may have introduced the virus into the population during the 2014 World Cup.

CNN is reporting that over 1.5 million people may have been affected by the disease in 2015

Main image via The Tico Times |  The U.S. Center for Disease Control

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