CDC – Page 2 – Dispatches From The Front

State health officials across the southern U.S. are working to prevent a widespread outbreak of the disease, after health officials have raised concern about higher risk in warming weather.

Currently there are 367 confirmed cases of the Zika virus in the U.S. The vast majority were contracted through travel to areas where the virus is actively spreading, outside the U.S. A small number of the cases were spread through sexual transmission.

The effects of the Zika virus are worse than health officials previously thought, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Intitutes of Health (NIH) said in a joint announcement at the White House yesterday.

“We continue to be learning pretty much every day and most of what we’re learning is not reassuring,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, Principal Deputy Director of the CDC, said. The virus is, “linked to a broader set of complications in pregnancy.”

In Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the CDC confirms the virus is spreading directly from infected mosquitoes to people. Schuchat said they estimate hundreds of thousands of people in Puerto Rico could become infected with the Zika virus. In turn, that could mean hundreds of babies may be born with birth defects.

Poor communication, a lack of leadership and underfunding plagued the World Health Organization’s initial response to the Ebola outbreak, allowing the disease to spiral out of control.

The agency’s reaction was hobbled by a paucity of notes from experts in the field; $500,000 in support for the response that was delayed by bureaucratic hurdles; medics who weren’t deployed because they weren’t issued visas; and contact-tracers who refused to work on concern they wouldn’t get paid.

Director-General Margaret Chan described by telephone how she was “very unhappy” when in late June, three months after the outbreak was detected, she saw the scope of the health crisis in a memo outlining her local team’s deficiencies. The account of the WHO’s missteps, based on interviews with five people familiar with the agency who asked not to be identified, lifts the veil on the workings of an agency designed as the world’s health warden yet burdened by politics and bureaucracy.

“It needs to be a wakeup call,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University in Washington. The WHO is suffering from “a culture of stagnation, failure to think boldly about problems, and looking at itself as a technical agency rather than a global leader.”

Tag: CDC

How States Are Working to Prevent a Zika Outbreak | ABC News

How the World’s Top Health Body Allowed Ebola to Spiral Out of Control | Bloomberg