Zika virus: Mothers tell their stories - 'The legacy will shame Brazil for years to come

   

       It should have been a joyful celebration for both Vanessa Oliveira and Thais Battistot. But like thousands of women across the South American continent, the two Brazilian mothers have had to come to terms with one of the most heartbreaking revelations – that their newborn arrivals have microcephaly.

Throughout their pregnancies, neither women was alerted to the risks of their foetuses developing the abnormality of a smaller head and underdeveloped brain, nor to the risk of associated neurological problems.

“I caught Zika sometime in the first four months of my pregnancy,” said Oliveira, 36, whose baby Maria Clara is three months old. “Nobody had a clue at the time that the red rash on my skin and itching would have such devastating consequences,” said the mother-of-two, who has a nine year old daughter.

               Zika mother

   Oliveira, who lives in Sergipe, north-east Brazil, said: “The frustrating thing was that I was closely monitored throughout my pregnancy because I suffered from pre-eclampsia, but no doctor spotted the changes in my baby’s development.”  

For 25-year-old Thias Battistot, a housewife who lives with her husband in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul in the south of Brazil, the shock of giving birth to a baby with developmental difficulties left her crying for weeks. “Emanuelle suffers from a mild form of the disease but it was only diagnosed when she was seven months old,” Battistot said. Now 10 months old, Emanuelle has been diagnosed with motor neurone problems.