The Zika Baby Crisis Panorama

It came from nowhere, attacking babies in the womb.

-TRANSLATION:

-I was shocked when he was born like this, really sad,

because I didn't know this illness existed.

A mystery disease suspected of being carried by mosquitoes

has now spread to 37 countries.

These mosquitoes have adapted tremendously and very efficiently

to the urban environment in tropical countries.

Thousands of babies have been born with microcephaly -

abnormally small heads.

-TRANSLATION:

-It makes me sad to realise the kind of problems they're

going to find in his little head because of this disease.

'Tonight on Panorama - the riddle of the Zika virus.

'Until we find the answer, more brain-damaged babies will be born.'

So there will be a whole new spike in cases of microcephaly?

We think there will be a whole new spike in cases.

'Many babies will have a bleak future.'

-TRANSLATION:

-He can't walk, he can't talk, he can't see,

and that's what his life is like.

It's bath time for six-week-old Enzo.

It looks like a normal, happy domestic scene

in north-eastern Brazil.

But his mother, Juliana, knows Enzo isn't a normal healthy baby.

-TRANSLATION:

-When he was born, there was so much going on

we didn't realise.

We were so happy we cried with joy,

but when he was in the baby ward I looked at him

and a normal child, and I could see his head was smaller.

Enzo's a suspected Zika baby, born with an abnormally small head.

He's likely to have brain damage.

His eyesight's affected.

His legs are displaced.

-TRANSLATION:

-I accepted it, because I know God gave him to me.

I can raise him no matter what his condition.

I will always love him.

He's my son. I've GOT to love him.

'These parents aren't alone.

'Nearly 5,000 babies have recently been born in Brazil

'with this condition.

'It's called microcephaly.'

What do you think when you look ahead to him as a little boy

and growing up?

-TRANSLATION:

-I pray

and I trust God will make him grow up as a normal child.

They're spraying the streets here against a mosquito

they think is to blame.

It carries the Zika virus,

suspected of being the cause of the explosion in cases of microcephaly.

Recife, the capital of the tropical state of Pernambuco, used to

be famous for its carnival, not a terrible epidemic of microcephaly.

This February, as usual, people were out partying in the streets.

But since carnival time a year ago, more than 1,400 babies in the area

have been born with brain deformities.

And, away from the celebrations, there's fear and uncertainty.

So how and why did the Zika virus strike so many pregnant women here?

How did the doctors figure it all out?

And what are the authorities doing to fight the mosquito that

spreads this devastating condition that affects babies in the womb?

The first sign of something dreadfully wrong came last August.

Doctors at Recife's hospitals began seeing more than the normal

handful of babies with the rare condition of microcephaly.

I went with baby Enzo

and his parents to meet Dr Vanessa van der Linden.

She was the first to realise microcephaly cases

were rising sharply.

-TRANSLATION:

-Lots of cases started to emerge.

At the hospital where I work, in just one day,

we had three babies born with microcephaly.

There is a malformation of the brain...

Dr Van der Linden noticed this infection caused scarring

of a baby's brain in different areas from cases she'd seen before.

In all brain, we have calcification in this part of the brain.

-TRANSLATION:

-There was something different about these cases,

probably a new pathological agent or a new disease.

Dr Van der Linden has been inundated with cases like Enzo's.

And your husband?

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

'Across town, in the Oswaldo Cruz Hospital, another

'paediatrician was seeing more cases of microcephaly last summer.'

-TRANSLATION:

-I've been practising for 20 years now.

I've seen cholera, diphtheria,

a number of diseases which affect families,

but unfortunately I've never seen anything like this.

One of Dr Coeli's patients is five-week-old Christian.

She's measuring his head.

It should be bigger, but he has microcephaly, too.

32cms, it's too small.

-TRANSLATION:

-At first, we couldn't understand what was going on.

This sudden boom of children born with microcephaly.

13 in a week, then ten more the week after.

Something strange was going on.

That's when we reported it to the Health Department.

Within days, the Brazilian authorities declared

a national public health emergency.

That was in November.

-TRANSLATION:

-It caught our attention around 70% of these mothers had

a rash at the beginning of their pregnancy,

in the first three months.

Not all of them, but almost all.

The rash was caused by Zika

and tests revealed that somehow the virus had passed

from the mother to some babies who developed microcephaly in the womb.

-TRANSLATION:

-We're 99% sure this microcephaly is caused by

the Zika virus.

But is there any other infection or any other factor associated

with this that may be worsening the magnitude of this

infection in children?

'Like many women, Edernalia, Christian's mother,

'didn't even know she'd been infected.'

How were you in your pregnancy?

-TRANSLATION:

-It went well. I had no symptoms, absolutely nothing.

So you didn't know you'd been bitten by a mosquito

-or you had any problems?

-No.

-TRANSLATION:

-While the woman is pregnant,

she imagines her dream baby.

She's been picturing a healthy, sound baby for nine months.

She has plans for it, and when the child's born, it has microcephaly.

The baby may have seizures.

The routine of the whole family has to change.

They have to be devoted to that child. It's sad.

Baby Christian has a chest infection

and has to remain in hospital overnight.

His grandmother, Damiana, stays to keep an eye on him.

-TRANSLATION:

-I feel frustrated. I keep asking God to help us.

I don't know what this is or what's going to happen.

His mother left the hospital.

She's too nervous because of the whole situation,

so I decided to stay.

We don't know what to do or why the baby is like this.

Zika has brought scientists from all over the world to Recife.

They're urgently trying to understand

the link between the mosquito, the virus and microcephaly.

We cannot take appropriate measures

unless we understand what's happening.

Professor Laura Rodrigues has flown in from London to head up

research on Zika and microcephaly at a Recife university.

They've had to start from scratch.

Zika, until November, October

we had no idea that it could be so harmful,

so there was very little research done,

so we know very little about it.

The Zika virus was first discovered almost 70 years ago

in monkeys in Uganda.

The first human case was discovered in Nigeria in the 1950s,

but scientists don't know if there were any microcephaly cases here.

From Africa, Zika spread slowly to Asia

and turned up nine years ago in the Pacific islands.

It wasn't until the outbreak in Brazil

a link between Zika and microcephaly was spotted.

That's when the Polynesians went back and re-examined their data

on aborted foetuses.

In French Polynesia, abortion is legal, and most of the women chose

to have terminations, so that's why we failed to spot it there,

but the spike in microcephaly was there.

Professor Rodrigues is leading a study across Recife,

gathering data from 400 pregnant women.

This is important because women at the moment,

if they're pregnant and they get Zika,

they don't know if the risk to their babies is 5% or it's 95%.

But the results of the research will be useful for the rest of the world.

I went with health workers to visit one of the pregnant women

taking part in Professor Rodrigues' study.

Adenilda!

Adenilda had a rash early in her pregnancy -

the tell-tale sign of Zika infection.

They're taking blood to find out

whether the first three months of pregnancy is, as they suspect,

the riskiest time to catch the Zika virus.

Adenilda's scans indicate she's in the clear,

but she'll only know for sure when the baby is born.

What would it mean to you if there was a difficulty with the baby?

As fear spreads in Recife,

scientists here now believe the epidemic isn't just a one-off.

Mosquito numbers rise and fall with the seasons,

and so will the Zika virus.

There's a big increase in the number of pregnant women with rash,

so we think that what's happening now is the second epidemic of Zika,

which will then be followed by a second outbreak of microcephaly

in eight, nine months.

So there will be a whole new spike in cases of microcephaly?

We think there will be a whole new spike of cases, yes.

'What does the future hold for thousands of Zika babies?

'An early study suggests over 70% will have a severe

'form of microcephaly.'

Six-year-old Emanuele has microcephaly

caused by a genetic condition, not Zika.

Emanuele's plight shows the huge burden that will be put

on the Zika families and the state.

His mother, Cleciana, told me her son has 20 seizures a day.

-TRANSLATION:

-He grows by the day. It just gets harder and harder.

He can't walk, he can't talk, he can't see.

That's what his life is like.

In 2010, the year Emanuele was born,

there were only five babies in the Recife area with microcephaly.

His parents say they still had to wait two years for a wheelchair

and sue the state to get them to pay for the boy's medicines.

-TRANSLATION:

-The government can't support the five children

born in 2010,

and now this figure has skyrocketed to more than 1,000.

They make promises, but in reality things are different.

The family live three hours' drive from Recife.

Transport is difficult, so Emanuele doesn't get the regular

physiotherapy sessions that microcephaly children need.

-TRANSLATION:

-He hasn't had physiotherapy.

His hands are supposed to open like this. That's what happens, see?

Always stuck.

The parents of the newborn Zika babies are at the very start

of living with microcephaly.

-TRANSLATION:

-We have to do exercises on a daily basis

to improve both his legs and hip.

-TRANSLATION:

-I hope he's going to be a normal kid.

Maybe not for others, but for me he's going to be a normal kid.

He's going to study and do everything a normal child does.

-TRANSLATION:

-He's going to be my comfort, my joy on sad days,

my eternal baby.

I'll look after him whatever the difficulties.

I will strive so he is given anything he wants.

Juliana and Jobson are unemployed.

They can use transport provided by the state to get to hospital

two or three times a week,

but they haven't yet seen any sign of the money

promised by the Brazilian President to support the Zika babies.

-TRANSLATION:

-This is a tragedy, a generation of children who will

turn into adults, but disabled adults.

It's going to be like the population of a whole town with microcephaly.

So why did the Zika virus take such a hold here in Recife

sparking the microcephaly epidemic?

Recife is a city that was founded literally on a swamp

and the city today spreads across a series of islands

and there is water everywhere.

Miles of open sewage canals flow through the city to the sea.

It's just one gigantic mosquito breeding ground

and three million people live here.

There's now an urgency to inspect hundreds of thousands of water tanks

to make sure they're properly sealed or treated.

You can see the problem.

Even this covered water tank, they've found mosquito larvae

in the water here.

There's two more tanks up there, another one over there,

and it just gives you an idea of the scale of the task.

They've been fighting the Aedes Aegyptae mosquito

in Recife for decades.

It carries many tropical diseases -

yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya - some of them fatal.

But Zika's been a game-changer.

The health authorities here have been spraying intensively

since the Zika epidemic reached its peak in autumn last year.

But with an area of over 200 square kilometres to cover,

it's a mammoth task.

We didn't have Zika virus before and it was probably

introduced by visitors from other parts of the world,

probably from Asia and specifically Polynesia,

who may have brought the virus in the first place.

Recife was virgin territory for the Zika virus -

a large population with no natural immunity.

And natural territory for a mosquito

that thrives in many 21st-century cities.

These mosquitoes have adapted tremendously

and very efficiently to the urban environment in tropical countries,

so this really is something that we need to be doing on a regular basis,

in a very intense way, so we can reduce the burden of this disease.

We're going to have this problem for a long time before we get

either natural immunity or vaccine-induced immunity.

But there's no vaccine yet to prevent Zika.

So, for the moment, education programmes

and spraying to kill off the mosquito are the only options.

The government's declared a war against the mosquito.

I'm out with the army inspecting homes in a poor slum, or favela.

Local health director Maria Eugenia is ramming home the message

that everyone needs to fight the mosquito in their own backyard.

It's the living conditions here that make people vulnerable to the

diseases carried by the mosquito.

Brazil already has the highest incidence of dengue fever

in the Western Hemisphere.

Last year there were a million and a half cases

and nearly 900 people died.

And the same mosquito that carries dengue carries the Zika virus.

Brazil has spent billions of dollars over the decades

trying to eradicate the mosquito with little success.

There are still septic tanks inside many houses,

but some people blame the government for the Zika epidemic.

It's pregnant women in poor neighbourhoods like this

who are most vulnerable to giving birth to babies with microcephaly.

A dozen teams around the world are racing to develop a vaccine,

but it's years away from being widely available.

In the meantime,

could Zika be defeated by a new experimental weapon -

a mosquito that's been genetically-modified?

How many are you releasing this morning?

This morning we are releasing 244,000 mosquitoes.

A British company is carrying out this field trial in Piracicaba,

1,600 miles south of Recife.

We only release males,

so these males are going to look for females, they're going to

mate with them, and all the offspring will die before they

reach the breeding age, so we're going to kill the next generation.

This is how it works - the eggs of the Aedes mosquito are injected

with a lethal gene to create a new strain of male mosquito.

It will pass on that gene when it mates and its offspring then die.

'Oxitec are now producing the GM mosquitoes in Brazil.

'This morning it's feeding time.'

-So this is blood?

-Yeah, this is lamb's blood.

We just put one of these blood plates here...

-They're all swarming.

-..and the females will be attracted to it.

'In the lab, like the outside world,

'it's only the female mosquitoes which bite.'

I can see how aggressive the female Aedes mosquito is.

I've been bitten several times on the backs of my hands

since I have been in the lab and I'm covered with repellent,

but they still seem to have got through.

People are very worried about anything genetically-modified.

A fear you're going to create some kind of super insect with

devastating results down the line.

How do you know you're not doing that here?

Well, our mosquito is self-limiting.

It is weaker than the mosquito in nature, so we know that in two

to four days, it is dead once it is released, so we know that for sure.

'Oxitec claims the trials in Piracicaba have

'resulted in 82% of wild mosquitoes being killed off.'

But this GM process hasn't passed all the regulatory hurdles yet,

and it will need massive scaling up to cover cities like Recife.

Meanwhile, how will the families with Zika babies cope?

There are more than 1,000,

spread across a state four times the size of Wales.

Baby Christian is out of hospital

and he's back home with his parents, Edernalia and Christiano.

-TRANSLATION:

-He won't be able to walk because of his legs.

That's what they told us.

He may never walk.

It makes you sad. It hurts.

-TRANSLATION:

-When I was told, I got really sad, I was upset inside.

I was crying inside.

It's not OK to have a child with microcephaly,

but since he was born like this, we have to give him love and care.

Christian's grandmother, Damiana,

is far from sure the teenage parents can cope with a disabled child.

-TRANSLATION:

-I'm really worried.

Edernalia is so young and inexperienced.

I am worried how she'll take care of him.

I want Christian to always be close to me because I'm more responsible.

'Now Damiana's other daughter, Tatiana, is eight months pregnant.

'The father's no longer around.

'The shadow of microcephaly hangs over her, too.'

Are you worried about your baby?

Are you worried about your pregnancy?

Has she talked to you about what she might do

if the baby has microcephaly?

-TRANSLATION:

-She said, if it's like Christian, that's OK,

but if it's more deformed, like the ones she saw back in Recife,

she won't keep it.

Would abortion be a possibility? Have you discussed that with her?

-TRANSLATION:

-Yes, a lot. I told her that's just wrong.

If she did that and I learnt about it, I would have gone to the police.

They have to act more responsibly.

Babies don't choose to be born.

There are many unplanned, unwanted pregnancies,

especially at carnival time.

Another reason so many babies with microcephaly were born here

is that abortion's almost always illegal in Brazil.

But now campaigners are taking a case to the Supreme Court,

arguing Zika and microcephaly must lead to a change in the law.

Tragedies sometimes open new doors.

I think it would be a very good thing, in spite of the horrible

aspects of this microcephaly, if that was the opportunity

where Brazil finally reconsidered the issue of legal abortions.

Tourists and travellers bitten by the mosquito

have spread Zika from Brazil across South America.

In a few cases, Zika's been sexually transmitted.

It's also suspected to have caused paralysis in some adults.

The Zika virus that first took hold here in Recife has now spread

to more than two dozen countries in the Americas,

and even to Europe.

It's become a global medical emergency - a growing pandemic.

There's been one case of microcephaly in the US -

a baby born to a woman who'd visited Latin America.

Three pregnant tourists who returned to Spain are also being monitored.

-TRANSLATION:

-I am worried about further developments for Zika

around the globe.

The virus is not going to affect one region only. It is going to spread.

That spread will most likely be across hotter countries.

But it's unlikely the mosquito which carries Zika

could survive in the colder conditions across much of Europe.

In Recife, where it all began, they're warning the tragedy

of the Zika babies is far from over, and not just in Brazil.

I think the world has to prepare to live with Zika for a few years

while we get the development

of the tools we need to prevent it.

And that means more babies with microcephaly?

It certainly means more babies with microcephaly.

-TRANSLATION:

-I'd give my life for my grandchildren.

I've got to take care of them.

Let's see what God has in store.

The new baby may be deformed, but I won't abandon him.

Since I left Recife three weeks ago,

88 more babies have been born in this state with microcephaly.

More Enzos, more Christians,

more families living with the devastating consequences

of the Zika virus.