A woman who had Zika virus after being bitten by a mosquito while traveling in Latin America gave birth to a baby with microcephaly and other disabilities on Monday, July 25.
According to doctors at the Val d'Hebron Hospital in Barcelona, this is the first case of microcephaly caused by the Zika virus in Europe, the Spanish agency EFE reports.
The head of the neonatology department, Felix Castillo, said that the woman refused to have an abortion, despite the fact that abnormalities in the development of the fetus were revealed at the 20th week of pregnancy.
The child was born on time as a result of a cesarean section. The newborn's head circumference turned out to be less than normal, the doctors stated.
Doctors, quoted by the website of the newspaper El Pais, call the condition of the newborn stable. The child is under constant supervision, but does not need artificial ventilation, doctors note.
The Zika virus was first discovered in 1947 in Uruguay, but since 2015 it has begun to spread rapidly in Latin America. Earlier this year, the World Health Organization declared the Zika outbreak a global threat.
The virus is transmitted to humans through mosquitoes or sexually. Fever is most often asymptomatic, the main danger of the virus is for women, as it can cause microcephaly in a child in case of pregnancy. Several thousand children have already been born with this diagnosis in Brazil.