March 15, 2018
In the absence of mediation or a vaccine to treat Zika virus infections in endemic areas, the best advice is to prevent infection by avoiding mosquito bites, eliminating areas where mosquitos breed, enhancing mosquito control and using precaution to prevent sexual transmission between humans. Other known routes of infection include blood transfusion or organ transplantation. Most worrisome is transplacental transmission during pregnancy from an infected mother to her unborn infant.
Zika is just the most recent example of the difficulties encountered when trying to control a new infectious disease when it suddenly emerges. We have seen this with other novel infectious diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome, Middle East respiratory syndrome, Ebola virus, enterovirus D-68, West Nile virus and the 2009 pandemic influenza.