[ad_1]
Three cases of Zika virus were confirmed in Madhya Pradesh by the National Institute of Virology (NIV) of Pune on Friday. The total number of cases of the largest mosquito-borne disease outbreak in India was increased to 133.
All three cases were confirmed in the Bhopal, Vidisha and Sehore districts of Madhya Pradesh. two months after the positive screening of an 85-year-old woman on September 21 in Jaipur, where the virus had infected 160 people. A joint team of experts from the Emergency Medical Wing of the Ministry of Health of the Union and the National Center for Disease Control, based in Delhi, is studying whether the disease s & # 39; 39; is spread to Madhya Pradesh from Rajasthan or there are other sources of infection.
P Ravindran, Emergency Medical Relief director, said: "There is no need to panic because the disease has mild symptoms and the death rate is zero in India. However, pregnant women are more susceptible to the disease because it causes birth defects such as microcephaly in the newborn. "
" In the last two years we have collected samples of 450,000 mosquitoes from different parts of the country to check for the presence of the virus. Our teams work on both confinement and awareness, "he added.
A senior official at the Ministry of Health, asking for anonymity, said:" It's all about from a focal epidemic as it remains limited to a small area of intervention. Until now, there seems to be a travel history in many positive cases, Jaipur being a popular tourist destination from which the first cases have been reported. As the disease is asymptomatic in about 80% of cases, many people are not infected and do not take precautions to limit infections. In addition, the Zika virus is transmitted by the mosquito aedes aegypti and causes symptoms of fever, rashes, muscular and joint pain. . It did not cause serious illness or death, with pregnant women being the most exposed. The treatment is generic and there is no vaccine.
Zika was reported in 86 countries, the largest epidemic in Brazil in 2015. It was first reported in India in Gujarat in February 2017, when three people tested positive, followed by 39, a case in Krishnagiri, Tamil Nadu, in July 2017.
A health advisory containing standard guidelines on preventing the spread of infection was sent to all states last week. "Our experts are looking at the issue and there is no reason to worry at the moment," said Sanjeeva Kumar, additional secretary for health,
.
First published: Nov. 02, 2018 23:46 IST
Source link
