Zika's ghosts

ABSTRACT

This text discuss the Brazil's Zika epidemic. Zika fever is a relatively old disease, since the Zika virus was isolated in 1947 in Africa, but also a very new one it had reached the headlines in fall 2015,, when observations made in north-eastern Brazil linked can infection with Zika virus (ZIKV) with an increased riskof microencephaly, a severe birth defect. After a dramatic surge of 2015-2016, the prevalence of Zika in Brazil has greatly decreased. The mosquito Aedes aegypti, the main vector of ZIKV, wasofficially eliminated from Brazil in 1958 in the framework of the PAHO directed, continent-wide campaign to eradicate this mosquito. Studies of epidemics are usually focused on moments of an acute calamity.