Zika virus: Risk higher than first thought, say doctors

[nitpicker]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36184799

Zika virus: Risk higher than first thought, say doctors

By Wyre Davies
BBC News, Rio de Janeiro

6 hours ago

The mosquito-borne Zika virus may be even more dangerous than previously thought, scientists in Brazil say. They told the BBC that Zika could be behind more damaging neurological conditions, affecting the babies of up to a fifth of infected pregnant women.

Rates of increase in Zika infection in some parts of Brazil have slowed, thanks to better information about preventing the disease. But the search for a vaccine is still in the early stages. And Zika continues to spread across the region.

Most doctors and medical researchers now agree that there is a link between the Zika virus and microcephaly, where babies are born with abnormally small heads because of restricted brain development.

While it is estimated that 1% of women who have had Zika during pregnancy will have a child with microcephaly, leading doctors in Brazil have told the BBC that as many as 20% of Zika-affected pregnancies will result in a range of other forms of brain damage to the baby in the womb.

A separate study, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, said that "29% of scans showed abnormalities in babies in the womb, including growth restrictions, in women infected with Zika".
(snip)

[Liberty Belle]

1. It is turning some parts of the brain to liquid - worse than microcephaly cases from anything else.

Yet abortion is illegal in some Zika-infected countries. So they will have a generation of brain damaged children, if they survive past infancy. How can anybody who actually has a brain believe that is God's will?

[SheilaT]

2. Unfortunately, people who think everything is God's will

do not think critically about anything. And they are convinced that blind, unquestioning faith, especially in "the will of God" is crucial. They are impervious to facts of any kind, to not believe that questioning the supposed will of God should ever be allowed.

It's a mindset completely alien to many of us.