GENEVA / ZIKA EMERGENCY COMMITTEE

The World Health Organization said today that after a review of the evidence, the committee advised that the clusters of microcephaly and other neurological complications constitute an extraordinary event and a public health threat to other parts of the world. WHO

• Categories: News & Features / News Stories / Unifeed
• Video Length: 00:02:33
• Production Date: 1 February 2016
• Asset Language: English
• Personal Subject: MARGARET CHAN
• Corporate Name: WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION - WHO
• Subject Topical: HEALTH HAZARDS
• Geographic Subject: LATIN AMERICA
• MAMS Id: 1556283
• Parent Id: 1556283
• Alternate Title: unifeed160201a

Description

STORY: GENEVA / ZIKA EMERGENCY COMMITTEE
TRT:02:33
SOURCE: WHO
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH/NATS

DATELINE: 1 FEBRUARY 2016, GENEVA

Shotlist

1.Wide shot, meeting room
2.SOUNDBITE (English) Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization:
“After a review of the evidence, the committee advised that, the clusters of microcephaly and other neurological complications constitute an extraordinary event and a public health threat to other parts of the world.”
3.Cutaway, meeting
4.SOUNDBITE (English) Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization:
“I am now declaring that the recent cluster of microcephaly and other neurological abnormalities reported in Latin America following a similar cluster in French Polynesia 2014 constitutes a public health emergency of international concern.”
5.Cutaway, meeting
6.SOUNDBITE (English) Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization:
“The experts agree that the causal relationship between the Zika infection during pregnancy and microcephaly is strongly suspected, though not yet scientifically proven. All agree on the urgent need to coordinate international efforts to investigate and understand this relationship better.”
7.Cutaway, meeting
8.SOUNDBITE (Enlgish) David L. Heymann, Chair of the Emergency Committee:
“It was a very difficult decision to discern between what is a public health emergency of international concern and what should be precautionary measures because of possible relations between Zika and these clusters, but in the end the Director-General said, the public health emergency of international concern was called regarding the clusters of microcephaly and neurological disorders and there were two major recommendations. These were surveillance for microcephaly needs to be standardised particularly in areas where Zika virus transmission is occurring, at the same time there needed to be intensified research of new clusters of microcephaly and neurological disorders and to determine in case control and other study methodology whether there is a causitive link to Zika virus and other factors.”
9.Wide shot, meeting room

Storyline

The World Health Organization on Monday (1 February) declared the mosquito-borne Zika virus a public health emergency. The disease has been linked to thousands of cases of microcephaly.

At an emergency committee meeting in Geneva, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said that after a review of the evidence, the committee advised that “the clusters of microcephaly and other neurological complications constitute an extraordinary event and a public health threat to other parts of the world.”

She said, “I am now declaring that the recent cluster of microcephaly and other neurological abnormalities reported in Latin America following a similar cluster in French Polynesia 2014 constitutes a public health emergency of international concern.”

The Committee concluded that a coordinated international response is needed to improve surveillance, the detection of infections, congenital malformations and the detection of neurological complications, to intensify the control of mosquito populations and to expatiate the development of diagnostic tests and vaccines to protect people at risk.

Experts also considered pattern of recent spread and the broad geographical distribution of mosquito species that can transmit the virus, the lack of vaccines, and rapid and reliable diagnostic tests and the absence of population immunity in newly affected countries were cited as further causes for concern.

The Zika virus was first isolated in 1947 from a monkey in the Zika forest of Uganda. Its historical home has been in a narrow equatorial belt stretching across Africa and into equatorial Asia.