While the world’s attention is focused on the Zika virus, a new UN report warns that a future global epidemic could result in millions of deaths and could be far worse than the recent Ebola outbreak in Africa. The hard hitting report urges the World Health Organization to reform in order to be ready to combat future crises.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a “public health emergency” on Monday, due to the apparent link of the Zika virus to a surge in serious birth defects in South America. Following a meeting of independent experts in Geneva, WHO director-general Margaret Chan said Zika was an “extraordinary event” that needed a coordinated response.
From the initial discovery in the heart of Ugandan forest darkness to mysterious genetically-modified Mosquitoes in Brazil, the newest threat to human health (most notably pregnant women) is the ominous-sounding Zika virus. The epidemic is spreading from its epicenter in Brazil - threatening disaster at the Olympics with "female athletes to consider participation "very carefully"", to Colombia (with 2100 pregant women infected), and further north in America with CDC confirming 6 cases in Texas.
Submitted by Clare Bernishvia TheAntiMedia.org,
The World Health Organization announced it will convene an Emergency Committee under International Health Regulations on Monday, February 1, concerning the Zika virus ‘explosive’ spread throughout the Americas. The virus reportedly has the potential to reach pandemic proportions — possibly around the globe. But understandingwhy this outbreak happened is vital to curbing it. As the WHO statement said:
Meet the new Ebola.
Well over a year since the global fears over the Ebola epidemic sent US stocks reeling in late 2014 ahead of an even sharper rebound, today the head of the World Health Organization delivered a very stern warning when she said that the Zika virus, a mosquito-borne pathogen that may cause birth defects when pregnant women are infected, has been “spreading explosively” in South and Central America.