An­na-Lisa Paul

T&T has record­ed its first con­firmed case of a mi­cro­cephaly birth due to the Zi­ka virus, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh an­nounced yes­ter­day and urged the pub­lic to re­spect the fam­i­ly's need for pri­va­cy.

The in­fant girl, who was born on Sep­tem­ber 20, is re­port­ed to be "do­ing fine" and is at home with her par­ents.

The news came some eight months af­ter the Zi­ka virus was first di­ag­nosed in T&T.

She was dis­charged one week ago from the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where sev­er­al tests and scans were done to de­ter­mine if the birth de­fect could be as a re­sult of the Zi­ka virus.

The con­fir­ma­tion, which was made via a blood sam­ple re­ferred to the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (Carpha) and the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (PA­HO), was re­ceived last Fri­day.

Deyals­ingh said he then in­formed both the Prime Min­is­ter and the ba­by's par­ents.

Speak­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the Min­istry of Health, Port-of-Spain, Deyals­ingh said the de­lay in mak­ing the pub­lic an­nounce­ment was due to a de­sire to pre­serve the fam­i­ly's dig­ni­ty and af­ford them the pri­va­cy to "di­gest" the news.

The ba­by was born at the Gulf View Med­ical Cen­tre and was di­ag­nosed with mi­cro­cephaly.

The in­fant was lat­er trans­ferred to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and ad­mit­ted to the Neona­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit for treat­ment be­fore be­ing dis­charged in­to the care of her par­ents.

Mi­cro­cephaly is a birth de­fect where a ba­by's head is small­er than ex­pect­ed when com­pared to ba­bies of the same sex and age.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tres for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC), these ba­bies of­ten have small­er brains that might not have de­vel­oped prop­er­ly. Last month, the min­istry con­firmed four oth­er cas­es in un­born ba­bies with brain ab­nor­mal­i­ties which are be­ing re­viewed to de­ter­mine if they were al­so linked to the Zi­ka virus.

Deyals­ingh yes­ter­day re­it­er­at­ed that there were prop­er pro­to­cols in place to as­sist preg­nant pa­tients who may de­liv­er ba­bies born with mi­cro­cephaly linked to the Zi­ka virus.

Both Deyals­ingh and spe­cial­ist de­vel­op­men­tal be­hav­iour­al pae­di­a­tri­cian, Dr Na­tal­ie Dick, said it would vary de­pend­ing on a case-by-case ba­sis.

"We must tai­lor the treat­ment to suit the case," he said, adding there was no-one-size-fits-all treat­ment method.

Dick said ba­bies born with mi­cro­cephaly due to Zi­ka would re­quire a thor­ough phys­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion along with a brain scan, x-rays and oth­er spe­cial tests re­lat­ed to hear­ing and sight as those sens­es could al­so be im­paired

He said that the Min­istry would be ramp­ing up erad­i­ca­tion ex­er­cis­es to elim­i­nate breed­ing sites for the aedes ae­gyp­ti mos­qui­to, which tran­mit­ted the Zi­ka virus and oth­er dis­eases, such as dengue, chikun­gun­ya and Yel­low Fever.

Deyals­ingh said of the 289 pub­lic health no­tices that have been hand­ed out in the past sev­er­al months, 263 house­holds had com­plied with the warn­ings to clean up their premis­es. Med­ical of­fi­cials says thou­sands of peo­ple have con­tract­ed the virus even though the of­fi­cial tests list close to 500 cas­es.