Zika virus disease has reached India, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) confirming first three cases in Gujarat's Ahmedabad.
The WHO endorsed the findings of laboratory tests conducted in the country, saying all three cases, including that of a pregnanat woman, were reported from Bapunagar area of the city.
The disease is spread by daytime-active Aedes mosquitoes and an infection during pregnancy can cause birth defects in newborns known as microcephaly — a condition in which babies' head is abnormally small. It is characterised by brain damage and may cause other defects like blindness, deafness, and even seizures.
In the last few years, the transfusion medicine community has been paying special attention to emerging vector-borne diseases transmitted by arboviruses. Zika virus is the latest of these pathogens and is responsible for major outbreaks in Africa, Asia and, more recently, in previously infection-naïve territories of the Pacific area. Many issues regarding this emerging pathogen remain unclear and require further investigation. National health authorities have adopted different prevention strategies. The aim of this review article is to discuss the currently available, though limited, information and the potential impact of this virus on transfusion medicine.
What are some other poorly researched pathogens?
Antibiotic resistance poses one of the greatest threats to mankind. It could make all the powerful drugs and progress made in pharmaceutical and medical field meaningless and could push back to the era of great epidemics.
Scientists are closely monitoring the growing incidence of antibiotic resistance for many effective tuberculosis drugs. The urgent need for new antibiotics to treat tuberculosis has been provided the highest priority.
For the first time the UN agency, World Health Organisation (WHO) has announced a list of antibiotic-resistant “priority pathogens” that comprises 12 families of bacteria that pose the greatest threat to mankind and can take millions of lives every year.
Why would we not try to eradicate mosquitos?
With Zika threatening the U.S., there has been some discussions in the media about the feasibility of completely eradicating mosquitoes. On that topic, here are two recent articles with differing points of view:
A Slate article called It’s Time to Wipe Mosquitoes Off the Face of the Earth makes the case for genetically-modified mosquitoes that could either pass a killer gene to their offspring or that would be incapable of reproducing. These efforts have been successful in limited trials, with the added benefit that the absence of mosquitoes didn't appear to have harmed the ecosystem, and the article suggest that these methods could be implemented globally.
On the other hand, a CNN article called Mosquitoes: Why can't we just kill all of them? - CNN.com explains that the complete eradication of the Mosquito (or at least the deadliest of its species) would require a concerted effort of a scale never before tried, with the caveat that even a very small remnant population could repopulate the species again in a very short time, so for all practical purposes, it would be impossible to kill all mosquitoes.
The WHO endorsed the findings of laboratory tests conducted in the country, saying all three cases, including that of a pregnanat woman, were reported from Bapunagar area of the city.
The disease is spread by daytime-active Aedes mosquitoes and an infection during pregnancy can cause birth defects in newborns known as microcephaly — a condition in which babies' head is abnormally small. It is characterised by brain damage and may cause other defects like blindness, deafness, and even seizures.
In the last few years, the transfusion medicine community has been paying special attention to emerging vector-borne diseases transmitted by arboviruses. Zika virus is the latest of these pathogens and is responsible for major outbreaks in Africa, Asia and, more recently, in previously infection-naïve territories of the Pacific area. Many issues regarding this emerging pathogen remain unclear and require further investigation. National health authorities have adopted different prevention strategies. The aim of this review article is to discuss the currently available, though limited, information and the potential impact of this virus on transfusion medicine.
What are some other poorly researched pathogens?
Antibiotic resistance poses one of the greatest threats to mankind. It could make all the powerful drugs and progress made in pharmaceutical and medical field meaningless and could push back to the era of great epidemics.
Scientists are closely monitoring the growing incidence of antibiotic resistance for many effective tuberculosis drugs. The urgent need for new antibiotics to treat tuberculosis has been provided the highest priority.
For the first time the UN agency, World Health Organisation (WHO) has announced a list of antibiotic-resistant “priority pathogens” that comprises 12 families of bacteria that pose the greatest threat to mankind and can take millions of lives every year.
Why would we not try to eradicate mosquitos?
With Zika threatening the U.S., there has been some discussions in the media about the feasibility of completely eradicating mosquitoes. On that topic, here are two recent articles with differing points of view:
A Slate article called It’s Time to Wipe Mosquitoes Off the Face of the Earth makes the case for genetically-modified mosquitoes that could either pass a killer gene to their offspring or that would be incapable of reproducing. These efforts have been successful in limited trials, with the added benefit that the absence of mosquitoes didn't appear to have harmed the ecosystem, and the article suggest that these methods could be implemented globally.
On the other hand, a CNN article called Mosquitoes: Why can't we just kill all of them? - CNN.com explains that the complete eradication of the Mosquito (or at least the deadliest of its species) would require a concerted effort of a scale never before tried, with the caveat that even a very small remnant population could repopulate the species again in a very short time, so for all practical purposes, it would be impossible to kill all mosquitoes.