Guinea-Bissau has recorded three cases of Zika, becoming the second country in West Africa where the dangerous viral disease has been detected, the government said on Saturday. “Three cases of contamination by Zika virus have been confirmed,” a statement quoted Health Minister Domingos Malu as saying. The cases occurred in the Bijagos archipelago, a group of 88 islands of which 23 are inhabited, Malu told a cabinet meeting on Friday.
Doctors told local media that the pupal parasite burrowed in the brain of Luis Ortiz, 26, a student in Sacramento, came close to taking his life, news reports said Thursday. The worm was forming in a cyst that blocked the flow of water to chambers in Ortiz's brain, “like a cork in a bottle,” his neurosurgeon Dr. Soren Singel told the Napa Valley Register newspaper. Ortiz, who had gone to the hospital emergency room complaining of terrible headaches and nausea, eventually slipped into a coma, and required emergency surgery to remove the larvae.