WIKIMEDIA, FURFURThe World Health Organization (WHO)’s International Health Regulations Emergency Committee is convening today (February 1) in Geneva to determine whether the Zika epidemic spreading through the Americas should be considered an international public health emergency.
Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told The Guardian he anticipates the WHO will declare Zika a public health emergency. “WHO clearly dropped the ball when it came to responding to the Ebola virus. It took about five months to declare the Ebola virus in West Africa as a public health emergency of international concern. . . . Several reports have been published [on the response to Ebola] and the WHO can, and must, do better.”
In Colombia, the second-most Zika-affected country with around 20,000 confirmed cases, more than 2,000 pregnant women are confirmed to have been infected with the virus. None of the fetuses have been diagnosed with microcephaly, a brain-damage condition that results in an abnormally small ...
