Zika virus takes hold in Colombia

Since being infected with the Zika virus a month ago, Wendy

Johana Castillo has been experiencing

The Zika virus is transmitted by Aedes species mosquitoes.

Since being infected with the Zika virus

a month ago, Wendy Johana Castillo has

been experiencing pain all over her

body, a recurring fever and a skin rash.

But the 23-year-old Colombian is more

concerned about her unborn baby.

Every 15 days, she has to undergo a scan

to make sure her foetus isn’t developing

microcephaly, a birth defect that has

been linked to the mosquito-borne Zika

virus. Babies with the congenital

condition are born with abnormally

small heads and often suffer from poor

brain development.

“Doctors advised me not to move much

and, if I don’t feel my baby moving in

the womb, to rush to the nearest ER,”

Castillo told IRIN over the phone from a

bed in her cousin’s home in Soacha, on

the outskirts of Colombia’s capital,

Bogotá.

Castillo, who is 19 weeks pregnant, used

to work as a janitor at a construction site

in Girardot, a tourist town about two

and a half hours’ drive from Bogotá. She

said her workplace “was surrounded by

puddles and infested with mosquitoes”.

How to know if you have the virus?

Zika’s most common symptoms are mild

fever and a skin rash, usually

accompanied by conjunctivitis and

muscle or joint pain that begins a week

or less after being bitten by an infected

mosquito. Most people experience no

symptoms at all, but the links between

infections in pregnant women and an

increase in the number of children born

with microcephaly in neighbouring

Brazil has caused alarm among experts.

On Monday, the World Health

Organization declared that the strong

links between Zika infection during

pregnancy and microcephaly should be

treated as a global public health

emergency.

So far, cases have been confirmed in 23

countries in Latin America and the

Caribbean, but the WHO expects it to

spread rapidly throughout tropical areas

of the region, infecting up to four

million people. Brazil has been hardest

hit, with fears that as many as 4,000

babies may have been born with Zika-

related microcephaly since October 2015.

The country has declared a state of

emergency and rushed 220,000 soldiers

onto the streets to help eliminate

mosquito breeding grounds.

Colombia is the second most affected

country, with 20,297 confirmed cases,

2,100 of them among pregnant women,

according to government figures

released on Saturday.

So far, there are no reported cases of

infected women in Colombia giving birth

to babies with microcephaly, and last

week the government denied rumors that

a nine-year-old girl died after being

infected with the virus. The government

is nevertheless treating all pregnant

women suspected of being infected with

Zika as “high-risk pregnancies”, and has

advised women to avoid getting

pregnant before mid-2016.

Living in Zika’s Ground Zero

In Girardot, Castillo´s hometown, there

have been 1,437 reported Zika cases,

according to figures from the

municipality, which began keeping a

record in November 2015 after being

alerted by the Federal Health Authority.

The town has a year-round tropical

climate and is densely populated, both

factors that make it particularly

susceptible to the spread of Zika.

Although there have been no confirmed

cases of the virus being transmitted from

one person to another, a mosquito that

bites an infected person can transit it to

other people it bites.

“In emergency rooms, doctors have

doubled their shifts, leaving other

services uncovered,” said Erika Lorena

Ramirez, Girardot’s public health chief.

She told IRIN that medical clinics are

overwhelmed by people worried they

have the virus. Doctors at one hospital in

the town have gone from seeing an

average of six patients a day to 50.

Ramirez — herself infected with Zika —

said her town is used to handling

epidemics of dengue fever and

chikungunya, both of which are carried

by the same Aedes aegypti mosquito that

spreads Zika. Last year, chikungunya

infected some 76,000 people in Girardot,

nearly half the town’s population.

How many unreported cases?

Juliana Quintero, an epidemiologist at

Fundación Santa Fé, a hospital and

research centre in Bogotá worries that

many cases of Zika are going unreported.

She said that many people who had

negative experiences when visiting ill-

equipped medical centres in Girardot

during previous epidemics, probably

preferred to stay at home and handle the

problem themselves.

“People just think: why go to the

hospital, wait for hours and, at the end,

receive some acetaminophen (Aspirin),”

she told IRIN.