Halting march of Zika virus is health priority for 2016

New year, new threat. A virus suspected of triggering fetal brain damage is likely to spread further in 2016. Zika virus was discovered in the Zika forest in Uganda in 1947. For the next 50 years, the virus, which is carried by mosquitoes, caused small, sporadic outbreaks in parts of Africa and South-East Asia. In the last 10 years, there have been outbreaks on many Pacific islands – it infected 75 per cent of the population on the island of Yap in 2007, for example. In May last year, it made landfall in Brazil and has since spread to nine more countries, as far north as Mexico. Zika is spreading so fast that health agencies are ramping up resources to track and contain it. “Detecting circulation of the virus in new geographic areas is most important, to strengthen the responses of health services and step up surveillance for serious cases or complications,” says...