The spread of Zika is the first time the United States has faced a public health crisis like this in more than 50 years. It’s a crisis that leaves behind not just the immediately ill, but children who are damaged for life.
At least 12 babies in the United States have already been born with the heartbreaking brain damage caused by the Zika virus. And with that number expected to multiply, public health and pediatric specialists are scrambling as they have rarely done to prepare for the lifelong implications of each case.
For children born with with the worst of the brain defects caused by Zika, there will never be any miracle stories. No “the doctors said she would never walk, but … ” scenarios. These children will never walk. Never talk. Never laugh. Never play with a toy. Never feed themselves. Never even know that they are loved. They will only cry, and never be comforted.
They heard ophthalmologist Camila Ventura of Brazil, the epicenter of Zika in the Americas, describe how extremely irritable, even inconsolable, the newborns with microcephaly are.
“The babies cannot stop crying,” she said.
The parents of these children face not only day after day after day of bleak despair, but also crushing financial burdens.
Many of Zika’s littlest victims, diagnosed with microcephaly and other serious birth defects that might not immediately be apparent, could require care estimated at more than $10 million through adulthood.
While the Senate Republicans have been stringing people along for months, they left town without making any provisions for Zika. Now the subject won’t be taken up again until the fall. Meanwhile, the United States is moving from thinking about how to prevent Zika to how to care for its victims.
And the range of effects is wide.
Just as daunting is the question of how to best monitor those exposed in utero but without obvious abnormalities at birth. Vision and hearing problems can surface, as can seizure disorders. …
“This is new territory,” said Anne Schuchat, CDC’s deputy director, with public health officials simultaneously having to learn about Zika’s grave impact on fetuses while devising interventions for the consequences. “We’re trying to prepare ourselves and prepare pregnant women for when those babies are born and what should happen to them.”
We know the worst that Zika can do, because the worst is terrifyingly obvious. But even for children born with no obvious problems, there’s a strong possibility that Zika may have left more subtle damage.
The consequences of not dealing with Zika quickly will linger over the nation for a lifetime.