Pub­lic health care of­fi­cials have de­clined to com­ment on the is­sue ex­cept to ac­knowl­edge that pro­ce­dures are be­ing per­formed il­le­gal­ly in the ma­jor­i­ty of the cas­es. How­ev­er, spe­cial­ist ob­ste­tri­cian and gy­nae­col­o­gist Dr Sherene Kalloo has con­firmed the in­for­ma­tion.

"I have had pa­tients who have got­ten preg­nant and are fear­ful if they con­tract the virus, what can hap­pen, so with­out even hav­ing any signs or symp­toms of the zi­ka virus, they have opt­ed to ter­mi­nate the preg­nan­cy. We do have an in­crease in abor­tions, some known and some un­known," she said.

Dr Kalloo said she cur­rent­ly has six zi­ka pos­i­tive preg­nant pa­tients un­der her care.

"I have seen about six to eight pa­tients in the last cou­ple months who have ad­mit­ted to hav­ing done it and of course, there would be the oth­ers who will not ad­mit that they have done any­thing like that," she said.

While abor­tion is il­le­gal in T&T, there are loop-holes which al­low the pro­ce­dure to be done if the preg­nan­cy en­dan­ger the moth­er's men­tal, emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal well-be­ing.

Kalloo ex­plained that with her pa­tients the main is­sue is that "they are fear­ful of what could hap­pen and they can­not live nine months of car­ry­ing a preg­nan­cy not know­ing the out­come. The anx­i­ety is too much for them."

"Even be­fore any kind of coun­selling is done," Kalloo said, "many pa­tients have the fear of con­tract­ing the virus and their fears are valid based on what we know so far and what we don't know."

Dr Kalloo ex­plained that in the first and sec­ond trimesters of preg­nan­cy, the crit­i­cal stage of neu­ro­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment, is most sus­cep­ti­ble point when the risk of de­vel­op­ing the zi­ka syn­drome would be high­er.

She added: "Three cas­es were re­port­ed of pa­tients who con­tract­ed the zi­ka virus in the third trimester where fol­low-ups showed the zi­ka virus caused ces­sa­tion of brain growth. Af­ter mon­i­tor­ing de­vel­op­ment of these ab­solute­ly nor­mal sized ba­bies who had no mi­cro­cephal­ic ef­fects doc­u­ment­ed, theneu­ro­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment af­ter birth in­di­cat­ed these chil­dren had de­vel­op­men­tal prob­lems."

Kalloo said she has now in­creased her ef­forts to coun­sel and ed­u­cate her pa­tients about the in­creas­ing risks and re­sul­tant pos­si­bil­i­ties. This in­cludes urg­ing men to use con­doms dur­ing sex with their preg­nant part­ner as the virus sur­vives in the fe­male's sys­tem for up to two months and in men's se­men for up to six months.

She re­count­ed that one of her pa­tients in which a brain ab­nor­mal­i­ty had been de­tect­ed in the un­born ba­by was re­fused an abor­tion at a pub­lic health in­sti­tu­tion even af­ter the moth­er ex­pressed fears about the qual­i­ty of the ba­by's life .

"She came to me in a mess, men­tal­ly. A week lat­er she spon­ta­neous­ly mis­car­ried."

Dr Kalloo be­lieves more could have been done to stem the spread of the virus.

She es­ti­mates that out­comes of cur­rent cas­es ill be seen in the com­ing months.

How­ev­er, there is a glim­mer of hope now as the lat­est study on rats con­firms the use of an­ti­bod­ies on the zi­ka pos­i­tive preg­nant ro­dents re­versed the ac­tu­al symp­toms in terms of the ef­fects on the ba­by.

H"We are a long way from giv­ing it to hu­mans but it shows some pos­i­tiv­i­ty and hope for the fu­ture," she said.