(CNSNews.com) - Dr. Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a presentation at the National Press Club on Thursday that the top priority in fighting Zikas is “to protect pregnant women.
Frieden also called the Aedes aegyti mosquito, which spreads Zika, “the cockroach of mosquitoes.”
He further noted that “we have now seen clear evidence that even asymptomatic infection with Zika during pregnancy can result in microcephaly.”
“I vividly remember sitting with Dr. Zaki, our chief infectious disease pathologist, and having him show me the very special stains that he had done to show that Zika virus actually invading the neural tissue of newborn infants and destroying it,” said Frieden.
“This is a horrible thing to see,” he said. “It is just the kind of thing you would never want to see. And yet to understand that when a child is born with microcephaly, it's not because the skull was malformed. It's because the virus destroyed the brain cells. And the skull collapsed around the demolished or devastated brain.”
“The top priority is to protect pregnant women,” Frieden said. “And that focus has to be the guiding principle for our work everywhere there is risk for Zika.”
Here are some excerpts from Frieden’s presentation as transcribed by the CDC:
The latest challenge we're dealing with is Zika. This is unprecedented and tragic. It has been more than 50 years since we've identified any pathogen that can cause a birth defect. And we have never before identified a situation where a mosquito bite could result in an infection that causes a devastating birth defect. It is unprecedented. It is tragic. And it is now proven. We know that Zika causes microcephaly and other birth defects. But there is an enormous amount that we still don't know. We're still learning more, literally every day, about what Zika causes and how to prevent it.
The top priority is to protect pregnant women. And that focus has to be the guiding principle for our work everywhere there is risk for Zika.
Memorial Day weekend heralds the start of mosquito season in the U.S. We have a narrow window of opportunity to scale up effective Zika prevention measures. And that window of opportunity is closing. ….
Second, it's now clear that Zika causes microcephaly and other birth defects. I vividly remember sitting with Dr. Zaki, our chief infectious disease pathologist, and having him show me the very special stains that he had done to show that Zika virus actually invading the neural tissue of newborn infants and destroying it. This is a horrible thing to see. It is just the kind of thing you would never want to see. And yet to understand that when a child is born with microcephaly, it's not because the skull was malformed. It's because the virus destroyed the brain cells. And the skull collapsed around the demolished or devastated brain. It's a horrible situation.
Third, we have now seen clear evidence that even asymptomatic infection with Zika during pregnancy can result in microcephaly. And we know from past studies, about four out of five Zika infections appear to be asymptomatic …
Six, controlling this mosquito is really hard. Aedes aegypti is the cockroach of mosquitoes. It lives indoors and outdoors. It bites during the daytime and the nighttime. Its eggs can last for more than a year. They can hatch in a drop of water. In parts of the U.S. and Puerto Rico, they're highly resistant to certain insecticides. They prefer people, so they generally spread disease among people. And when they take a blood meal, they'll often bite four or five people at once. So they're capable of rapidly spreading the infection. There is no example of effective control of this mosquito in the modern era. I vividly remember in a trip to Puerto Rico, our lab team had set up a laboratory that hatched mosquitoes. And they were testing them for resistance. We put them in a bottle coated with insecticide to see whether they're knocked down or not. And to see them in a bottle that had been coated with what should be a very effective insecticide happily flying around minute after minute, hour after hour, shows us how important it is that we improve the methods we have of controlling mosquitoes.