Authorities in El Salvador have warned women never to get pregnant till 2018 after a deadly scourge has ravaged pregnant women and mothers who have given birth.
Health authorities in El Salvador are urging women not to get pregnant until 2018 in an effort to halt a surge of birth defects that are suspected to stem from a virus spread by a mosquito.
Known as Zika virus, it is spreading through the entire Latin American region and the Caribbean. The vector is Aedes mosquito, known to carry yellow and dengue fevers.
Other Latin American countries, such as Colombia and Ecuador, as well as Jamaica, have recommended delaying pregnancies, though not for an entire two years.
The rest of Latin America has responded with different tactics, ranging from widespread fumigation efforts to directing citizens not to be bitten by the Aedes mosquito.
So far, the hardest hit nation in the region has been Brazil, where more than a million cases have been confirmed, including nearly 4,000 cases of microcephaly in newborns that could be linked to Zika. Microcephaly is a rare, incurable condition in which an infant’s head is abnormally small.
El Salvador appears to have taken the most dramatic step so far, though the recommendation this week is not official policy. In a region that is largely Roman Catholic, the request has raised concern from the church, and many Salvadorans question the rationale for upending the national birthrate in order to counter the suspected effects of a virus.
Salvadoran officials defended the measure in an interview.
“If we don’t make any recommendations to the population, we could have a high incidence of microcephaly,” said Eduardo Antonio Espinoza Fiallos, the vice minister of health. “Of those children, 99 percent will survive, but with limitations in their mental faculties.”
For the most people, the effects of the Zika virus are mild. Symptoms are flulike and can last up to a week, with victims sometimes unaware that they have contracted the virus. Zika has no known cure.
Source: New York Times