First discovered in 1947, mosquito-borne virus Zika virus It reached epidemic proportions in Brazil in 2015, when thousands of babies were born with microcephaly, a disorder that causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads and underdeveloped brains.
“There has been an increase in Zika virus cases and the health department has formed several teams to contain the spread,” Dr Nepal Singh, chief medical officer of Kanpur district in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, told Reuters.
“There is a woman who is pregnant and we are paying special attention to her.”
cases have been registered in many Indian states In recent years, however, Amit Mohan Prasad, Uttar Pradesh’s top government bureaucrat for health and family welfare, told Reuters it was the first outbreak in the state.
The first case of Zika was reported in the industrial city of Kanpur on 23 October and the number of cases has increased in the last one week.
“People are testing positive because we are doing very aggressive contact tracing,” Prasad said.
Singh said officials are increasing surveillance of the outbreak and eliminating breeding grounds for mosquitoes that spread the virus.
,