Bogotá, 1 February 2016 (IRIN) – Since being infected with the Zika virus a month ago, Wendy Johana Castillo has been experiencing pain all over her body, a recurring fever and a skin rash. But the 23-year-old Colombian is more concerned about her unborn baby. Every 15 days, she has to undergo a scan to make sure her foetus isn’t developing microcephaly, a birth defect that has been linked to the mosquito-borne Zika virus. Babies with the congenital condition are born with abnormally small heads and often suffer from poor brain development. “Doctors advised me not to move much and, if I don’t feel my baby moving in the womb, to rush to the nearest ER,” Castillo told IRIN over the phone from a bed in her cousin’s home in Soacha, on the outskirts of Colombia’s capital, Bogotá. Castillo, who is 19 weeks pregnant, used to work as a janitor at a construction site in Girardot, a tourist town about two and a half hours’ drive from Bogotá. She said her workplace “was surrounded by puddles and infested with mosquitoes”.
Source: IRIN Global | Zika virus takes hold in Colombia | Comoros | Health & Nutrition











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