The four-month-old Vietnamese baby girl with
suspected microcephaly - Vietnam’s Ministry of Health
Vietnam
may have become the second Asian country, following Thailand, to report a case
of microcephaly due to Zika contraction, with a four-month-old girl in the
Central Highlands province of Dak Lak showing signs of the birth defect.
The baby
showed typical signs of the condition, born with an unusually small head and a
flat head front.
She and
her mother have undergone five examinations conducted by the National Institute
of Hygiene and Epidemiology so far this month, all of which showed that they
were previously infected with the virus.
A medical
history showed that the mother suffered from skin rashes and fever in her third
and sixth week of pregnancy, according to the General Department of Preventive
Medicine under the Ministry of Health.
The
document also noted that dengue fever was battering the area the patient
resides in at that time.
Raising
the alarm level of the epidemic, the health ministry said at a meeting with
national and international organizations on Monday that it would deliver the
medical samples taken from the mother and her infant to Japan for a
re-examination.
Should
the samples yield the same result, this will be the first case of Zika-caused
microcephaly to be confirmed in Vietnam, taking the number of native patients
contracting the virus to nine, including four in Ho Chi Minh City, one in the
southern province of Binh Duong, one in Nha Trang City, and another in the
south-central province of Phu Yen.
Four
foreigners have also informed Vietnamese authorities of their infection during
their stay in the Southeast Asian country, including an Australian man in
March, a Korean woman in May, a German woman and a Taiwanese man, both
confirmed in September.
Vietnam
may be the second country in Asia to report such a birth defect after Thailand.
Masaya
Kato, an expert from the World Health Organization (WHO) in Vietnam, said that
Zika has been considered an epidemic in the Southeast Asian country.
A check
on 24,000 mosquito specimens in the south-central province of Khanh Hoa
indicated that the percentage of the mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus is 0.3
percent, higher than the proportion of those carrying the dengue fever virus,
which is a common disease in Vietnam.
But not
all pregnant women who are infected with Zika will bear offspring with
microcephaly as the chance of having the birth defect ranges from one to 10
percent, according to Masaya.
Microcephaly
can result from other diseases, namely toxoplasmosis (caused by a parasite
found in undercooked meat), syphilis, rubella, herpes, and HIV, or can be
caused by pre- and perinatal injuries to the developing brain
(hypoxia-ischemia, trauma), according to the WHO.
Doctor
Tran Danh Cuong, deputy director of the National Hospital of Obstetrics and
Gynecology, said that the condition can be diagnosed in the prenatal stage by
fetal ultrasound for two weeks.
“If the
kid’s head circumference does not grow, it is likely that the fetus suffers
from the condition,” Cuong explained.
The WHO
said that the most reliable way to assess whether a baby has microcephaly is to
measure head circumference 24 hours after birth, compare the value with WHO
growth standards, and continue to measure the rate of head growth in early
infancy.
Babies born
with microcephaly may develop convulsions and suffer physical and learning
disabilities as they grow older, according to the global health organization.
Dr. Cuong
said that protecting oneself from mosquito bites is a critical solution to be
safe from Zika.
This can
be done by wearing long-sleeved clothes, applying mosquito repellent on exposed
skin on a regular basis, and spraying mosquito-killing aerosol in houses and
offices.
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