It just keeps getting worse.
The Geneva-based World Health Organization announced on Thursday that people living in areas of the world afflicted by the should consider Zika virus delaying pregnancy.
The advice will undoubtedly be seen as frustratingly imprecise, since the group's announcement doesn't specify how long women should postpone pregnancies, a move that raises more questions than answers.
“But it’s important to understand that this is not the WHO saying, ‘Hey everybody, don’t get pregnant,’" Nyka Alexander, a group spokesperson, told the The New York Times. “It’s that they should be advised about this, so they themselves can make the final decision.”
The advice targets people in 46 countries throughout Central America, South America, and the Caribbean who may be considering having a baby in the near future. The virus, which is carried by mosquitoes and can be transmitted sexually, does not typically harm infected adults who only carry the virus temporarily, although in rare cases it has provoked paralysis and death.
The most pressing issue the disease presents is the severe birth defects that it inflicts on the infants of infected women. Babies born with Zika often suffer from incomplete brain development and have abnormally small heads, a condition referred to as microcephaly.
Although there have been cases of Zika in the United States, so far they have all involved people who have traveled from countries south of the border. So far three babies born in the U.S. have had birth defects tied to the disease.
The vast majority of Zika-afflicted babies have been born in Brazil, where the tally now stands at over 1,500.
Ever since the disease began to emerge late last year, the WHO has sought to walk a fine line between encouraging necessary prevention efforts and not creating panic. However, deciding where to place that line has been a challenge, especially since understanding of the disease has continued to evolve over the past six months.
Two weeks ago, for instance, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta suddenly changed its recommendation on how long people who have recently traveled to Latin America should wait before engaging in unprotected sex. The original recommendation of four weeks was bumped up to eight.
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The agency made the change in recognition that the virus stayed in the body of an infected person for longer than previously thought and that the potential of sexual transmission was greater than assumed, two updates that did more to stir concern than assuage it.
Other groups, however, have recommended far more radical action. The Brazilian Society of Dengue and Arbovirus has suggested that men who travel to Zika-afflicted areas use condoms for six months after their visit.
Officials in El Salvador have taken the most dramatic action: Recommending that women delay getting pregnant until 2018.
Some experts believe that given a little more time, people will become immune to the disease after being bitten multiple times by Zika-infected mosquitoes. At that time, they reason, it will be safe to conceive again.
The WHO has also been pressured by other medical experts who have demanded more radical action to curb the spread of the disease. Notably, over 150 doctors recently signed a letter urging the group to recommend postponing the Summer Olympics scheduled to take place in Rio de Janeiro.
So far, the WHO has not changed its recommendation on the Olympics.
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