Govt to screen newborns for Zika-related defect

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 12

The government has decided to start screening newborns for Zika-related microcephaly to rule out potential clustering from the disease as was detected last year among infants in North Brazil at the time of global health emergency.

Though the Zika virus has since subsided with the WHO ceasing to call it a public health emergency of international concern starting November last, low-level transmission of the disease in India has promoted the government to step up Zika-related surveillance among children.

The Ministry of Health has now decided to screen all newborns at 55 major government tertiary-care hospitals across the country for possible cases of Zika-related microcephaly, a birth defect where a child’s head is much smaller than normal.

“After prolonged discussions with experts, the Health Ministry has decided to screen newborns with head circumference of less than 31 cm for Zika-related microcephaly. Their blood will be subjected to testing to rule out the virus. The programme will start soon and it will be part of the country’s efforts to strengthen birth defects screening among newborns,” Dr Ajay Khera of the ministry said.

These 55 institutes include AIIMS New Delhi, AIIMS-like institutions, PGI Chandigarh, JIPMER, among others. These are the ones where the Centre recently started its national birth defects surveillance programme to study defect trends and causes. These institutes are already screening newborns for eight birth defects, including neural tube defect.

“In the birth defects surveillance programme, we have decided to add the Zika virus component. Microcephaly can happen from a variety of viruses and the Zika virus is one of them. So far, we have not seen any Zika-related microcephaly case in the country. The new surveillance component will, on an experimental basis, provide evidence of microcephaly trends and see what is causing the defect,” Health Research Secretary and ICMR Director General Soumya Swaminathan said. ICMR will conduct the surveillance.

Annually, 5 lakh children are born in these 55 government tertiary hospitals. Since the birth defect screening started, the programme has picked up 250 microcephaly cases but all of them are non-Zika cases.

Khera said, “In the previous microcehpahy cases, we had ruled out Zika on the basis of the fact that there was no clustering and the mother did not have any past travel history to a Zika-transmission country. Now what we will do is – also test the blood of each infant born with microcehpahy to ensure it is non-Zika.” Clustering is a typical indicator of Zika-related microcephaly.

Pledges to eliminate malaria by 2027

• Launching a five-year malaria elimination plan (2017-2022), Health Minister JP Nadda on Wednesday said the government was working to eliminate malaria by 2027. The 2027 deadline is an improvement from the previous deadline of 2030 stated in the National Framework for Malaria Elimination last year
•  “Today, we are here for the launch of the National Strategic Plan for Malaria Elimination (2017-22) which gives strategies for working towards the ultimate goal of elimination of malaria by 2030 but we will try and eliminate the disease by 2027,” Nadda said