Central America Archive

The Zika virus is not new, but its spread and possible connections to microcephaly—a birth defect in which a baby has an abnormally small head—have caught the international community’s attention. Zika is not the same kind of challenge as Ebola, but it will require some similar measure of international cooperation to adequately address. While the World Health Organization’s declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on Feb. 1 is a good start, there are still fundamental questions that could complicate the international community’s response. Why is Zika spreading now? The virus, which emerged out of its relative geographic […]

A public health emergency is, above all, a human crisis. But its consequences don’t end there. A major emergency, whether its severity is real or perceived, can have a significant economic and political impact. Now that the World Health Organization has declared the Zika virus an “international public health emergency,” warning that the mosquito-borne pathogen is spreading “explosively,” the Zika outbreak has become loaded with even more political power. Zika’s force comes not only from the tragic effects it can apparently have on babies. Scientists have not proven the link, but they believe the virus is behind the thousands of […]

The global weather event known as El Niño has been blamed for droughts in Central America and northern South America and record-breaking floods in Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. But some scientists warn that the worst could be yet to come. El Niño poses major challenges for Latin America’s governments, some of which are in the midst of economic and political crises. The weather phenomenon is also testing their ability to face the growing threat of climate change, now and in the future. Scientists believe that El Niño, a warming of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean about once every decade […]