Is the Zika virus a real threat or all hype?

Editor’s note: Today we introduce a weekly column addressing medical and health care issues. Doctors from Mercer University’s medical school will provide useful and timely information on a variety of topics, from eating disorders to vaccine recommendations to preventing the spread of the Zika virus. Readers with questions for the doctors can email them at groover_ce@mercer.edu.

There has been a lot in the news lately about the Zika virus, and it can leave people confused about what exactly it is and how much they should worry about it. Zika is new to most people because it was not the cause of a major outbreak anywhere in the world until 2007, and the first outbreak in the Americas was the 2015 outbreak in South America. Since 2015, though, we have seen cases in every state but Alaska and Wyoming.

Zika is transmitted mainly through the bite of a specific kind of mosquito called Aedes aegypti, but can also be passed directly from person to person through sexual contact. Because it is so new, little is known about the virus, but experts estimate that about 20 percent of people who become infected with Zika end up having symptoms. Those symptoms can include fever, rash, joint pain, red eyes, muscle pain and headache.

Most troubling, though, is that Zika can cause severe birth defects that impact the head and brain of unborn children when a pregnant woman becomes infected. This is why the U.S. has issued travel warnings for pregnant women advising them not to travel to areas where Zika is known to be present, and has even cautioned that couples should engage in protected sex for a week or more when one partner returns from a Zika-affected region.

What about Georgia, though? The reason Zika is a concern in Georgia is that the mosquitoes that transmit Zika are present all over the state. We haven’t seen Zika itself in Georgia mosquitoes yet because there aren’t enough people who have the virus to start the transmission chain. This could change, though, now that we have seen the first-ever nontravel cases of Zika in Florida, and 69 cases of travel-related Zika in our own state.

While this isn’t cause for panic, it is something serious that we should all pay attention to, and we can all play a part in helping to keep Zika from spreading in Georgia. The best way to do this is to control mosquitoes. You can use insect repellant to keep yourself from being bitten if you will be outdoors for long periods of time where mosquitoes are present. You can also prevent mosquitoes from appearing in the first place by draining stagnant water wherever you can. This keeps mosquitoes from being able to breed in that water, keeping them away from you, your house and your loved ones.

The bottom line is that Zika is a very serious virus that can have devastating effects, but we have a long history in the U.S. of being successful at controlling mosquito-transmitted illnesses. We completely eradicated malaria from everywhere in the United States in 1951. If we all pay attention and do our part, we can help keep our state safe from the worst of the Zika epidemic.

This story was originally published October 21, 2016 at 5:35 PM with the headline "Is the Zika virus a real threat or all hype?."