As the Zika viral epidemic continues across the Americas, it’s projected that 93.4 million people in total could become infected before the epidemic burns itself out. According to a new model developed by U.S., English and Swedish researchers, 1.6 million women of childbearing age could contract Zika from infected mosquitoes. Experts say women who are infected with Zika during the early months of their pregnancy are at highest risk of giving birth to babies with microcephaly.
Babies born with microcephaly have small heads and brains, causing mental and physical disability, seizures and sometimes death.Experts say not every pregnant woman infected with Zika will give birth to a child with severe birth defects. But Alex Perkins, one of the model’s developers from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, says the number of newborns born with the birth defect could nonetheless be significant. “If you want to think about the numbers in terms of microcephaly and things like that, I think somewhere on the order of tens of thousands is what our numbers would
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Please insert your comments here