Towards a ZIKV Climate-Health Service at the Latin American Observatory

The World Health Organization declared the Zika virus (ZIKV) a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHIEC) in February 2016 after a cluster of microcephaly cases and other neurological disorders potentially linked to Zika virus were observed. In response, the Latin American Observatory —an informal regional partnership involving more than 15 countries, aimed at improving climate-smart decision-making services— joined efforts with health practitioners and allied research institutes to design and co-produce a set of information tools to help fight the Zika epidemic in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Using the Datoteca, a local branch of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society’s (IRI) Data Library, the Observatory is developing a web service that (a) fully considers the contribution of climate as a partial driver of the disease seasonality, (b) uses the most updated health and socio-economic information relevant to the problem, and (c) integrates these different components in an action-oriented, easy-to-use and freely-available online interface that permits the users to assess both present and expected conditions that could affect ZIKV-sensitive populations in the Americas. Here we introduce and discuss the first version of this novel climate-health service, available —in Spanish— at http://datoteca.ole2.org/maproom/Sala_de_Salud-Clima/index.html.es.