The Butantan Institute, a major research facility owned by the São Paulo state government and the largest vaccine manufacturer in Latin America, announced this month that it is developing a Zika virus vaccine to prevent microcephaly in babies.
Microcephaly is a birth defect in which babies are born with smaller heads than expected. Babies with microcephaly typically have smaller brains that may not have developed properly.
Fears of microcephaly dominated headlines in the Brazilian press around 2015 and 2016, when the country experienced a Zika virus epidemic. Researcher Ilana Löwy of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) called it a “short, intense, and scary episode.”
“The outbreak ended in 2016, but not in the long term, as the damage caused by a Zika virus infection persists in affected children,” she wrote.
The trauma caused by the Zika epidemic led authorities in 2021 to advise women to postpone their pregnancy plans to avoid potential complications caused by Covid.
In February 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Zika-related microcephaly a public health emergency of international concern, which ended in November of the same year. The U.S. Embassy in Brazil issued a travel warning at the time, emphasizing that pregnant women should not travel to most of Brazil.
Zika cases have dropped significantly since that epidemic, but are on the rise again in Brazil.
Data compiled by the Health Ministry shows a peak of more than...
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