According to Dr Amir Attaran’s recent commentary in the Harvard Public Health Review, by going ahead this summer, the Rio-based Olympics Games face the risk of speeding up the spread of the Zika Virus.
The Professor in the School of Public Health and the School of Law at the University of Ottawa explained, ‘Rio de Janeiro is more affected by Zika than anyone expected, rendering earlier assumptions of safety obsolete.
‘When in January the International Olympic Committee declared Rio a ‘safe environment’ for the Games, it was speculating, because Brazil’s Ministry of Health temporised until February to declare Zika a notifiable disease and begin counting cases.’
He further added that the situation would only be exacerbated by an estimated 500,000 foreign tourists flocking to Rio for the Games, ‘potentially becoming infected, and returning to their homes where both local Aedes mosquitoes and sexual transmission can establish new outbreaks.’
Dr Attaran concluded by querying, ‘Where is the love for the possible victims of a foreseeable global catastrophe: the damaged or dead adults, and the babies for whom — and mark these coldly clinical words carefully — fetal brain disruption sequence is as terrible as it sounds, and extinguishes the hope of a normal life even before it has begun?’
In the wake of the spread, and with many travellers visiting their pharmacy prior to travel, pharmacists are being encouraged to not only get equipped and recognise the symptoms of Zika Virus, but to offer travel advice and patient education.
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