Importance of Zika virus disease

Why is Zika virus disease an important health-care and epidemiological problem?

Mark Loeb: Zika virus has been known to pose potential problems since the 1940s. It was first discovered in Uganda, and it has been responsible for outbreaks in Africa and Asia for a number of years. Most recently, though, it has been associated with microcephaly in Brazil, Colombia, and in a number of other countries. So it has become a very important public health problem.

The association between the Zika virus and the microcephaly is more or less confirmed. There is still more information that we need, but we know that it is very, very important in terms of public health problems to identify people who have Zika virus, particularly pregnant women.