Kevon Felmine

Doc­tors are await­ing test re­sults on a ba­by born with mi­cro­cephaly to de­ter­mine whether the child suf­fered the birth de­fect as a re­sult of the moth­er con­tract­ing the Zi­ka virus.

How­ev­er, one gy­nae­col­o­gist said giv­en the high in­ci­dence rate of ba­bies born with mi­cro­cephaly be­ing linked to the virus, there would be much sus­pi­cion among the pop­u­la­tion.

On Sep­tem­ber 22, the Min­istry of Health said that there were 294 Zi­ka-pos­i­tive preg­nan­cies while the num­ber of con­firmed Zi­ka cas­es stood at 489.

The child was born at the Gulf View Med­ical Cen­tre (GVMC) a week ago and was di­ag­nosed with mi­cro­cephaly, a birth de­fect where a ba­by's head is small­er than ex­pect­ed when com­pared to ba­bies of the same sex and age. Ba­bies with mi­cro­cephaly of­ten have small­er brains that might not have de­vel­oped prop­er­ly, the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) states.

The ba­by was trans­ferred to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty CEO Anil Go­sine con­firmed that the child was ad­mit­ted to its Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit.

GVMC di­rec­tor Dr David Ali said the moth­er showed no signs of the Zi­ka virus dur­ing preg­nan­cy, but when the ba­by was di­ag­nosed with mi­cro­cephaly, the moth­er was test­ed and it was con­firmed that she had the Zi­ka virus.

Ali said some­times some­one would have Zi­ka and show no symp­toms, hence it was not picked up dur­ing the moth­er's preg­nan­cy.

In a state­ment last night, the Min­istry of Health con­firmed the birth of a ba­by with mi­cro­cephaly.

"The moth­er was at­tend­ed to pri­vate­ly and was not a pa­tient of the Mt Hope Ma­ter­ni­ty Hos­pi­tal where the na­tion­al screen­ing ef­fort is lo­cat­ed. It is to be not­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go reg­is­ters ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12 cas­es of mi­cro­cephaly year­ly due to a va­ri­ety of ge­net­ic caus­es. To date, this case can­not be di­rect­ly at­trib­uted to the Zi­ka virus and the as­sis­tance of PA­HO/WHO has been sought to make a clin­i­cal de­ter­mi­na­tion," the state­ment said.

The CDC said their sci­en­tists found enough ev­i­dence to con­clude that Zi­ka virus in­fec­tion dur­ing preg­nan­cy is a cause of mi­cro­cephaly and oth­er se­vere foetal brain de­fects.

Lo­cal pae­di­atric neu­rol­o­gist Dr Ra­jin­dra Parag said the main cause of mi­cro­cephaly or a small head is when the brain does not de­vel­op from the off­set due to lack of oxy­gen, blood or vi­ral in­fec­tion. Parag said it can some­times be a ge­net­ic con­di­tion while at oth­er times no cause can be found.

He said the sur­vival of ba­bies with mi­cro­cephaly de­pends on the sever­i­ty of the im­pair­ment to brain de­vel­op­ment, but there were ma­jor prob­lems of epilep­sy and low in­tel­li­gence and, in some cas­es, prob­lems with speak­ing.