Worries about lack of Zika awareness in American Samoa

Transcript

Mosquito, Papua New Guinea. Photo: RNZ / Johnny Blades

There are worries over a lack of awareness being raised about suspected zika cases in American Samoa, and its possible link to severe birth defects.

The mosquito-borne disease has been linked to thousands of severe birth defects in Brazil, although there is no definitive proof zika was the cause.

Our correspondent, Monica Miller, says a woman diagnosed with zika last week, was told by a LBJ doctor that up to six people a day are being diagnosed with the virus.

Monica Miller: She said as she was reading up on zika, she's read up about this connection on birth defects among babies born of pregnant women who contract this disease. She felt that the hospital, or the health authority should be promoting this message, that it wasn't getting out. And we talked with the epidemiologist at the health department, Scott Anesi. He said that the centres for disease control, while it's putting it out there that there might be a chance of pregnant women who contract zika, that there might be complications with their babies, but really there hasn't been any links confirmed by CDC for any of the cases in the United States or it's territory. But the epidemiologist said it's only in Latin America where there's been reports of babies who were born of women who contracted zika having a health defect.

Leilani Momoisea: The health department did issue a statement though, didn't they?

MM: Yeah, basically saying that if you contract zika, these are the symptoms. Mainly you get fever, rash, and then joint pains. Almost like dengue and chikungunya. They also said that in rare cases, there are birth defects associated with pregnant women who contract zika. That was about it. So after hearing that the hospital has had an average of six cases of zika per day, we checked with the people at the health department again. We were told that yes, there's a lot of suspected cases but the tests that are conducted in Hawaii to confirm it, first we were led to believe that the tests were taken off island and that they needed a secondary test but we're finding out that, no, none of the tests have been sent off island.

LM: This one woman has said that she doesn't believe that there's enough awareness about the disease especially for pregnant women, have you heard this being echoed by anyone else?

MM: Yes, you hear parents also and some of the teachers, because they're comparing this to when there was a dengue outbreak and there was a lot of visits at schools, and presentations made by the health authorities. Also, just the mobilising of the whole territory in cleaning up the place. The health department has said, clean up your surroundings, get rid of places where mosquitos can breed because this zika is also spread by mosquitos. But really, unless there's the same kind of approach that was taken when there was a dengue outbreak last year, i think people are not going to pay that much attention. Also the level of ads that our radio stations for example are running, it's not as much as when we had the dengue outbreak.

LM: And that link to birth abnormalities, is that information not emphasised?

MM: It's like it's buried at the bottom of the notice. I can also see where they are coming from, that CDC hasn't confirmed it, but they should still put it out there, so that women are aware.