The Zika Crisis: Focusing on Children with Disability
Abstract
Right on the heels of the Ebola crisis, the global community now faces its fourth Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), widely covered as the ‘Zika crisis’. Although the declaration of a PHEIC pertains specifically to “the recent cluster of microcephaly cases and other neurological disorders”, the WHO’s first Strategic Response Framework (1) was almost exclusively preoccupied with the Zika virus and its vector, the aedes egypti mosquito. The Framework’s objectives focused on surveillance, vector control, promotion of protective behaviours, and fast-tracking research and development of diagnostic tests and vaccines. However, the WHO revised its Strategic Response since then, drawing greater attention to the support that families and children with Congenital Zika Syndrome (CZS) will need in the short- and long- term in order to reach their full potential. Using the ‘F-words of childhood disability’ (2) — function, fitness, family, friends, fun, and future — as a guide, this article identifies and discusses important responses to the PHEIC that have received little to no attention by any of the organizations self-reporting to the WHO’s ‘4Ws Emergency Portal’ as of 18 June 2016.
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