Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and his Brazilian counterpart, Dilma Rousseff, on Wednesday (January 27) called for a regional meeting next week to launch a joint battle against the mosquito-borne Zika virus.
Brazil and Colombia, so far the worst-affected countries in Latin America, have been grappling with the virus which has been spreading at an alarming rate.
Rousseff said a Mercosur meeting with other leaders in the region had been set to take place in Uruguay on Tuesday (February 2) next week.
Zika is causing a widening health scare across tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas, where it has spread to over 20 countries.
In Brazil, where the virus is believed to have arrived in the hemisphere before spreading via mosquitoes, it has been linked to a brain defect in nearly 4,000 new-borns.
The mosquito-borne Zika virus has already infected more than 13,500 people in Colombia and could hit as many as 700,000, its health ministry said last week.
Speaking outside the CELAC summit of Latin American leaders in Quito, Santos said Zika was a global health issue that needed to be addressed by all of the region’s leaders.
“The topic of Zika is a topic that concerns all of the countries because we are being affected or could be affected by the Zika epidemic. In the case of Colombia, more than 170 municipalities in my country, more than 14,000 people are being affected by Zika and the estimates indicate that this will keep growing at the same pace that these epidemics grow. At it maximum point, this could affect close to 600,000 people,” he said.
In Colombia roughly 560 pregnant women are among those infected by the virus, the ministry said, though so far no cases of new-borns suffering from microcephaly have been reported.
Santos said the meeting next week would also gather health officials and experts debating solutions for the outbreak.
“The decision that we have made at the CELAC level is to call for a meeting of all health ministers as soon as possible so that we can share experience and information. This is a new phenomenon for which there is very little information nor much experience and for that reason, the more we collaborate the more effective we will be in containing this epidemic,” he said.
Both Colombia and Brazil have mobilised troops and health workers to identify potential breeding grounds, fumigate and educate residents on the dangers of still and stagnant water, where the female insects lay their eggs.
In a news briefing after the summit in Ecuador, Rousseff said the countries needed to share all the knowledge they have developed to battle mosquito-borne illnesses.
“I proposed that we should come together around this battle. We are aware, and we will all make an effort — and cooperate with technological and scientific research – but we know that the only way to cooperate at this time is by sharing knowledge about the best practices to fight the virus or the latest technologies to fight the virus. In reality, we will hold a Mercosur meeting on Tuesday and we will open this Mercosur meeting on Tuesday in Montevideo,” she said.
Rousseff said her regional counterparts should all attend next week’s meeting and come up with a joint action plan.
“We will open this Mercosur meeting to all the countries, of the CELAC or Unasur, that wish to attend. CELAC will also organise a specific meeting with our health ministers and other authorities involved in the battle,” she said.
The illness is not dangerous for most people except pregnant women and others affected by complications that scientists still struggle to understand.
Zika has become more widespread as the Aedes aegypti mosquito that transmits the virus by biting an infected person has migrated around the globe.
Governments and health agencies, including the World Health Organization and the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, have cautioned pregnant women to consult physicians before they travel to affected countries. (Reuters)