Name: 【TED】Nina Fedoroff: A secret weapon against Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases (A secret weapon against Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases | Nina Fedoroff)
Uploaded: 2017-06-15T16:24:52.000Z
Duration: 15 min 11 s
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Well for most adults, it's a relatively mild disease --

a little fever, a little headache, joint pain, maybe a rash.

In fact, most people who get it don't even know they've had it.

But the more we find out about the Zika virus

For example, doctors have noticed an uptick

of something called Guillain-Barré syndrome in recent outbreaks.

In Guillain-Barré, your immune system attacks your nerve cells

it can partially or even totally paralyze you.

Fortunately, that's quite rare, and most people recover.

But if you're pregnant when you're infected

Here's that infant with what's called microcephaly.

It was actually doctors in northeastern Brazil

who first noticed, just a year ago, after a Zika outbreak,

that there was a peak in the incidence of microcephaly.

to be sure that it was caused by the Zika virus,

And if you're a "bring on the evidence" type,

So where did it come from, and how did it get here?

Like many of our viruses, it came out of Africa,

Researchers at the nearby Yellow Fever Research Institute

identified an unknown virus in a monkey in the Zika forest

surfaced a few years later in Uganda-Tanzania.

The virus then spread through West Africa

and east through equatorial Asia -- Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia.

But it was still mostly in monkeys and, of course, mosquitoes.

In fact in the 60 years between the time it was first identified in 1947 and 2007

there were only 13 reported cases of human Zika fever.

And then something extraordinary happened on the tiny Micronesian Yap islands.

There was an outbreak that affected fully 75 percent of the population.

Today we have two billion commercial airline passengers.

An infected passenger can board a plane, fly halfway around the world

before developing symptoms -- if they develop symptoms at all.

Then when they land, the local mosquitoes begin to bite them and spread the fever.

Zika fever then next surfaced in 2013 in French Polynesia.

By December of that year, it was being transmitted locally by the mosquitoes.

That led to an explosive outbreak in which almost 30,000 people were affected.

From there it radiated around the Pacific.

There were outbreaks in the Cook Islands, in New Caledonia,

and almost all the way around to the coast of South America and Easter Island.

there was an upsurge of cases of a dengue-like syndrome

in the city of Natal in northeastern Brazil.

The virus wasn't dengue, it was Zika, and it spread rapidly --

Recife down the coast, a big metropolitan center, soon became the epicenter.

Well people have speculated that it was 2014 World Cup soccer fans

But others have speculated that perhaps it was Pacific Islanders

participating in championship canoe races

that were held in Rio that year that brought it in.

The virus is being locally transmitted by mosquitoes

virtually throughout South America, Central America, Mexico

Until this year, the many thousands of cases

that have been diagnosed in the US were contracted elsewhere.

But as of this summer, it's being transmitted locally in Miami.

is either about protecting people or about eliminating the mosquitoes.

Or you can cover up and apply insect repellent.

Getting vaccinated is not an option, because there isn't a vaccine yet

and there probably won't be for a couple of years.

Staying home isn't a foolproof protection either

because we now know that it can be sexually transmitted.

Covering up and applying insect repellent does work ...

So that leaves the mosquitoes, and here's how we control them now:

The protective gear is necessary because these are toxic chemicals

Although it does take quite a lot more to kill a person than to kill a bug.

These are pictures from Brazil and Nicaragua.

And we of course can spray insecticides from planes.

Last summer, mosquito control officials in Dorchester County, South Carolina,

authorized spraying of Naled, an insecticide,

early one morning, as recommended by the manufacturer.

【TED】Nina Fedoroff: A secret weapon against Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases (A secret weapon against Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases | Nina Fedoroff)

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【TED】Nina Fedoroff: A secret weapon against Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases (A secret weapon against Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases | Nina Fedoroff)

extraordinary

eventually

eliminate

effective