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If you are coming from a Zika country, see a doctor
View(s):By Kumudini Hettiarachchi
If you have been in a country with active transmission of Zika, get yourself checked by a doctor on your return. This is the message being sent out to expectant mothers by the health authorities.
While stressing that there is no reason to panic, Consultant Epidemiologist Dr. Samitha Ginige, attached to the Epidemiology Unit, said that earlier people who had been travelling in Zika-affected countries were advised to seek medical attention if they had flu-like symptoms on the day of returning to Sri Lanka or if hit by fever within two weeks of such travel. “Zika is just like the flu, a mild disease for which there is no need to medicate oneself or get hospitalised. Our advice is to take paracetamol every eight hours if having symptoms and rest, but avoid non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen, aspirin and disprin,” he said, adding that no deaths from Zika have been reported.
However, with some reports that if expectant mothers get exposed to the Zika virus, their babies could be affected by microcephaly (abnormally small heads linked to under-developed brains), as an added precaution, we are asking such mothers to go see the doctor,” Dr. Ginige said.
The jury is still out on whether Zika does cause microcephaly, the Sunday Times understands. At a media briefing during the recent 69th Regional Committee Meeting of the World Health Organisation’s South-East Asia Region, the Regional Director, Dr. Poonam Khetrapal Singh, said that in Thailand, five mothers who, had been exposed to the Zika virus, had given birth to normal babies sans microcephaly.
But some countries have reported increased numbers of microcephaly during a Zika outbreak and as such scientists believe there may be a link between Zika and microcephaly.
The Zika virus is spread through the bite of the Aedes aegypti mosquito and to a lesser degree Aedes albopictus, which are also the bearers of dengue, which is now endemic in Sri Lanka. Zika transmission has also been reported through sexual contact.
With the latest Zika spread starting in Venezuela, Brazil and Columbia in South America, Mexico and also the Caribbean last year and then moving onto the Maldives, Thailand, China and Singapore, there is speculation among doctors that with the world becoming a global village the entry or “import” of this virus to Sri Lanka seems inevitable.
“We need to be vigilant and ensure that we know when it has come,” a senior doctor said.
Dr. Ginige assured that all necessary measures have been put in place since 2015 to meet this situation. Earlier, the advice to travellers who are returning from Zika-affected countries was to report at the 24-hour Health Desk at the Bandaranaike International Airport, Katunayake, if they were having fever at the time of arrival or to a doctor if they developed a fever within two weeks after their return. While that still stand, we are now telling expectant mothers to check-in with a doctor even if they do not have a fever but have been in such a country.
He said: “Zika is a notifiable disease and we have sent out a health advisory that if a person, who has a travel history in a country which is reporting the Zika virus, seeks treatment from any doctor for flu-like symptoms within two weeks’ of his/her return, the doctor should send a blood sample to the Medical Research Institute (MRI). The MRI has diagnostic tools (PCR) for Zika detection. However, the blood samples should be taken within the first five days of the appearance of the signs and symptoms.”
Meanwhile, expectant mothers or those who are hoping to become pregnant in the near future are being advised to avoid visiting countries where Zika is prevalent, unless it is necessary and unavoidable. It is better not to take unnecessary risks, is the reasoning.
Closer home, there have been a few cases of Zika reported in the Maldives and Malaysia, while Singapore has reported community-transmission of the virus with about 200 to 300 being affected.
It is only about 20 percent who get infected with the Zika virus, who show symptoms, it is learnt, with the disease manifesting as “just a fever” which passes after awhile.
The incubation period (the development of the infection from the time of the entry of the virus through the mosquito-bite into the body and the appearance of symptoms) is about seven days. If the patient is symptomatic, the virus could be in the blood for 10-14 days.