Zika emergency over – WHO

The Zika virus is no longer a public health emergency – but remains a “significant” public health challenge, the World Health Organisation has ruled.

WHO says it is changing its approach because the link between the virus and microcephaly in babies has been shown by research.

This means that a “robust” longer-term mechanism is needed for managing the world’s response to the outbreak, it said.

This requires a sustained programme of work with dedicated resources to deal with the long-term nature of the disease, WHO said.

The end of the public health emergency was declared by WHO director-general Dr Margaret Chan after a meeting of WHO’s emergency committee on Friday.

A WHO statement said: “Many aspects of this disease and associated consequences still remain to be understood, but this can best be done through sustained research.”