How a Medical Mystery in Brazil Led Doctors to Zika

"The virus now threatens the economies of fragile nations and the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. It has opened a new front in the debate in heavily Roman Catholic countries about a woman’s right to birth control and abortion.

And the children stricken with microcephaly, or abnormally small heads, have doctors everywhere asking: What is this virus? How could it have been around for almost 70 years without us realizing its power? What do we tell our patients about a bug that can hide in a mosquito’s proboscis and a man’s semen, even in human saliva or urine? What do we tell young women who ask if their unborn babies are safe?

Dr. Kátia Petribu, a hospital psychiatrist in Recife, remembers the mothers. They were ghosts — mute, expressionless figures in corridors holding babies whose foreheads seemed to have vanished.

Many of the mothers were young, one just 14. “They were in a state of shock,” she said. “They were unable to talk.”"

read the newstory by DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.,
Simon Romero​ and Sabrina Tavernise​
How a Medical Mystery in Brazil Led Doctors to Zika - The New York Times