The relationship between Zika virus and microcephaly leads experts to suggest to avoid pregnancy

 Colombia health officials said on Thursday detecting two cases of microcephaly related Zika virus. This is the first confirmed infections in that country since the disease began to spread not until late last year.
This announcement came a day after the Center for Disease Control (CDC) of the United States confirmed that this virus does cause serious birth defects such as microcephaly, among others.
Colombian authorities said they do not expect birth defects reach the scale of Brazil, which has presented more than a thousand cases of microcephaly, a disorder that causes babies to be born with very small heads.
Fernando Ruiz Gómez, deputy health minister of Colombia, said that it is estimated that between 95 and 300 children could be born with microcephaly and about 380 patients will get Guillain-Barre syndrome, an autoimmune disease linked to cases of zika that causes paralysis and, some cases, death.
It is anticipated that the total number of infections in Colombia could reach 200,000 cases, according to Ruiz. Given these recent findings officials affected by this epidemic some countries, such as El Salvador and Colombia, urging women to avoid pregnancy.
Marcos Espinal, an expert who heads the operations against the zika of the Pan American Health Organization, an agency of the World Health Organization (WHO) said in an interview that he thought recommend to women to avoid conception during the most critical months of the epidemic, as did Colombia, "is good advice."
However, WHO does not follow that policy. Bruce Aylward, director of emergency response agency says that prevent pregnancy "is a complicated decision that is different for every woman."
At present this recommendation affects Americans of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands of the United States and American Samoa, where Zika virus circulating locally. But if it spreads, as expected to do this summer, women in Hawaii and in many states of the Gulf Coast could also face this difficult decision.
Supporters of avoiding pregnancy offer several reasons. First, they do not believe that more aggressive efforts to control mosquitoes can protect pregnant women 24 hours a day for nine months.
No country has controlled the dengue or chinkunguña that, like the zika are transmitted by the mosquito Aedes aegypti, and the same health agencies have warned that reductions of 80 to 90 percent in mosquito populations often do not reduce disease transmission.
Secondly, it is not expected that the vaccine achieve completion in at least two years.
And, thirdly, growing evidence that zika outbreaks are intense but brief. In 2013 the virus infected 66 percent of the population of French Polynesia for seven months and then disappeared.
Because women recovering from zika seem to be immune to the virus, experts say them delay conception avoids the risk of having children with serious birth defects and allows them to safely conceive a year later.
Manuel Navas, a fertility specialist in Fajardo, Puerto Rico, the city where some of the first infections zika were detected on the island, said that discourages most patients who want to conceive unless they are desperate to have children and understand the risks.
That's the advice I would give to his daughter, he said. Asked how patients react when advised to delay conception, he said "they appreciate the advice."