Zika Virus

This article is about the zika virus itself; its origins, its common threats, and its rates of survival

The Zika Virus is a member of the family of virus' called Flaviviridae. It gets its name from the zika forest in Uganda this forest is where the disease was first isolated. All the way back since the 1950s it has been known to occur on a small equatorial belt between Asia and Africa. In 2007 it spread across the Pacific Ocean into The United States.

Zika can cause birth defects if a pregnant women is bitten by an infected mosquito, her fetus can be at risk of getting infected. Making these threats even scarier is the fact that there is not yet a cure for zika. And to a regular teen or adult the symptoms are just as bad. Initial symptoms include: Fever, Rash, Joint pain, Muscle pain, Vomiting, etc.

Nobody thought the zika virus was a killer. All we had seen was the symptoms in the previous paragraph and birth defects. The virus infecting hundreds of thousands of people of course had some symptoms that were much worse than what anyone had seen. The birth defects were so catastrophic that some cases resulted in miscarriages. The way it can kill a grown person is an infection called immune thrombocytopenic purpura it makes the blood cells that were attacking the virus turn on your own blood platelets. Zika is a very dangerous disease and we are working to find the cure.

Sources: google images History origins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zika_virus