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The Federal Government said it has put in place measures to ensure that the Zika virus is not transmitted by mosquitoes in the country.
The federal government’s decision came as the Director General of the World Health Organisation, WHO, Dr. Margaret Chan is convening an International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on Zika virus today in Geneva, Switzerland, to ascertain whether the Zika virus outbreak constitutes a public health emergency of international concern.
In a telephone chat with Vanguard, the Director-General of the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, Prof Abdulsalam Nasiru, said measures put in place include conducting epidemiological tests on mosquitoes to ensure they do not carry the virus.
According to him, as a follow up, there has been regular monitoring already and a meeting of stakeholders comprising experts on public health among others would be convene on Wednesday in Abuja.
Over the weekend, the Minister of Health, Prof Isaac Adewole, issues a travel alert to pregnant women from Nigeria not to travel to Brazil and other Latin American countries.
The Zika virus has been tied to severe birth defects, including babies born with brain damage to infected mothers. There is no vaccine that can prevent the infection and very few tests available to detect it.
Worse still, people in most countries have never been exposed to the virus before, so there’s very little natural immunity to the virus in the general population.
The mosquito that carries the Zika virus, the Aedes aegypti mosquito, is the same mosquito that spreads the Chugwuniya fever and the yellow fever diseases, and is found in most parts of the world including Nigeria.
A species of the same mosquito carries Dengue fever.