Zika virus
The World Health Organization on Friday announced in an online press conference that the Zika virus outbreak no longer poses a world public health emergency.
“The Zika virus remains a highly significant and long term problem, but it is not any more a public health emergency of international concern,” the world health body’s emergency committee chair Dr. David Heymann said.
While Zika causes only mild symptoms in most people, pregnant women with the virus risk giving birth to babies with microcephaly – a deformation that leads to abnormally small brains and heads.
The agency was careful not to dismiss the risk still posed by the virus.
“We are not downgrading the importance” of the Zika virus, said Dr. Peter Salama, director of the WHO’s health emergencies program.
The agency believes the “Zika virus and associated consequences remain a significant enduring public health challenge requiring intense action but no longer represent” a global health emergency, it said in a statement.
Go to video
Top US official urges WHO to address sexual misconduct allegations
Go to video
UN warns of sub-standard medicines being sold in Sahel region
Go to video
Cholera outbreak in Malawi claims over a 1,000 lives
01:59
Laboratories in Kenya and Tanzania train rats to detect tuberculosis
01:06
Nigeria confirms diphtheria outbreak, monitors situation in 4 states
01:10
Malawi has reportedly run out of cholera vaccine amid its worst epidemic in decades