Zika Virus: Yet Another Emerging Threat to Nepal
Abstract
Zika virus (ZIKV) is a flavivirus with single stranded RNA related to yellow fever, dengue, West Nile, and Japanese encephalitis viruses and is transmitted by Aedesmosquitoes primarily by Aedesaegiptiwhich is widely distributed in Nepal. ZIKV was first identified incidentally in Rhesus monkey in Uganda in 1947 and human infection in 1952; and by now outbreaks of ZIKV disease have been recorded in Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently declared the ZIKV an international public health emergency. The aim of this paper is to briefly summarize origin, signs, symptoms, transmission, diagnosis, preventions and management of ZIKV and possible threat to Nepal in light of endemicity of other arbovirus infections and common mosquito vector species in Nepal.Journal of Nepal Health Research Council JNHRC allows to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of its articles and allow readers to use them for any other lawful purpose. Copyright is retained by author. The JNHRC work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).