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Spring has arrived two weeks earlier than usual and, not being a fan of winter, I'm perfectly okay with that. Actually, we didn't really have a winter this year; it's been jacket weather all the way through. The hottest health topic seems to be the Zika virus that is spreading rapidly in South America and has reached the Caribbean. The World Health Organization is projecting up to 4 million infections in the Western Hemisphere by the end of 2016. I don't put much stock in their projections, however. Their prediction of the extent of the Ebola outbreak was vastly overstated. As you'll learn in my blog article, Zika causes a very mild illness, but appears to place developing babies at risk for nervous system defects, particularly microcephaly (small head size). In this it is quite similar to rubella (German Measles), which caused a very mild illness in children but microcephaly and other birth defects if a woman contracted the disease early in her pregnancy. Thankfully, there are supplements that should prevent Zika illness if taken regularly. These are the articles I've posted over the past month:
Dr. Dale |
