Malaria has long menaced the world, but gains have occurred. Those efforts could now be stymied by budget cuts, however. Here’s how a disease that knows no borders could widen its deadly reach.
Aedes aegypti, the Zika-carrying mosquito.
khlungcenter/Shutterstock
Zika is not gender neutral: women’s rights are at stake.
Revellers at a carnival in Sao Paulo wear mosquito masks in a reference to the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which can spread dengue and Zika on February 4, 2016.
Paulo Whitaker/Reuters
There are likely to be more Zika cases reported in Texas.
How will the downgrade of Zika’s emergency status affect women like this 23-year-old Vietnamese woman and her baby born with microcephaly?
Vietnam News Agency/AAP
Our immune system protects us but when it comes to some mosquito-borne disease, it can work against us. What are the implications for the development of a Zika virus vaccine?
A pickup truck from the Department of Health fumigates in San Juan, Jan. 27, 2016.
Alvin Baez/Reuters
We found that less than 1% of published research papers around the time of both outbreaks, that related to the outbreaks, actually explored their gendered impact.
New research shows common local mosquitoes aren’t able to spread Zika. This means Australia is unlikely to see a major outbreak of the disease. But a risk remains in northern Queensland.
County officials gear up to hand-spray mosquitoes in San Diego.
REUTERS/Earnie Grafton
A computer model suggests that while more cases of Zika can be expected in the continental U.S. outbreaks will probably be small and are not projected to spread.
A woman looks at a CDC health advisory sign about Zika at Miami International Airport
Carlo Allegri/Reuters
Politics, not epidemiology or medicine, drives government responses to disease. Politicians are the ultimate decision-makers in public health, and they must respond to political forces.
With more birth abnormalities linked to Zika, effects of the virus may be more sinister than we thought.
BMJ 2016
Arthrogryposis is where a baby’s joints are deformed due to a shortening (known as contractures) of the muscles from before birth.
Researchers are trying to understand how maternal immune responses might contribute to certain neurological disorders in offspring.
Regis Duvignau/Reuters
Principal Medical Scientist and Head of Laboratory for Antimalarial Resistance Monitoring and Malaria Operational Research, National Institute for Communicable Diseases
Associate Dean For Global One Health, College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences; and Director, Pandemic and Biosecurity Policy Program, Scowcroft Institute for International Affairs, Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University