76 marieclaire.com.au
THE ALARM-RAISER
DR VANESSA VAN DER LINDENIt was during the sweltering humidity of August
2015 when Dr Vanessa van der Linden started
to worry. A paediatric neurologist in the city of
Recife, north-east Brazil, she would normally
only see one child every couple of months who
had microcephaly, a disease that stops the
skull and brain from developing in the womb.
But last year, she started seeing more and
more heartbroken mothers whose babies had
abnormally small heads. Many of the women
told her they had been sick and had suffered
from an itchy, red rash during pregnancy.
One day, Dr van der Linden came across
three newborn babies with microcephaly in the
maternity ward of the hospital where she
worked. Their mums told her they had also
suffered from similar symptoms during
pregnancy. Dr van der Linden didn’t know it atthe time, but the beachside city they all called
home was fast becoming the ground zero of
a global epidemic of the Zika virus.
“It couldn’t be a coincidence – something
very different, very strange was [happening],”
says Dr van der Linden, whose mother Dr Ana
van der Linden and brother Dr Hélio van der
Linden Jr, also paediatric neurologists, had
noticed a worrying number of babies being born
with the disease too. Soon, the family were
sharing CT scans as they raced to identify what
was causing this spike in microcephaly cases.
In October Dr van der Linden and her
mother alerted authorities to the fact they
believed Zika virus was likely causing terrible
birth defects. They mobilised medical teams
and helped put together an anti-mosquito force
of 250,000 agents to stop the insect breeding.
“We tried to raise the alarm quickly,” says
Dr van der Linden. “But I never imagined this
would become a global issue.”THE GRIEVING MOTHER
GESSICA DOS SANTOS“Every time I miss him, I come here,” explains Gessica Dos Santos, 23, opening
the doors of a tall white cupboard full of colourful oneseis and tenderly arranged tiny
shoes. “I kiss the clothes, I imagine how he would look in these clothes.”
In September last year, Dos Santos was 20-weeks pregnant and she and her
husband were praying for a boy. An ultrasound answered their prayers, but their dreams
were shattered when an MRI showed the baby boy had a severe case of microcephaly.
“The doctor explained he might be born and then die soon after or remain in a vegetative
state,” says Dos Santos in the documentary Zika. Back home, “I cried so much until I
decided not to cry anymore. I decided to enjoy the pregnancy, to enjoy my son.”
When her time came, the boy was born by caesarean, but rushed to intensive care
with respiratory failure. “When I got there, I told him how much I loved him, I talked
to him, just as I had done when he was in my belly. Then, I knew he
wasn’t there anymore. I kissed him, I held him, I sang him lullabies.”
Out of such loss, Dos Santos made an incredible choice:
to allow doctors and scientists to use his little body to better understand
this disease. “I didn’t want to be selfish and leave all the mothers
in the world with so many unanswered questions.”TRACKING
AN EPIDEMIC1947 The virus was first
detected in Zika Forest,
Uganda, in 1947. For decades,
it was thought to be a harmless
illness with no long-term effects.2007 The first major
outbreak occurs in Micronesia.2014 It is thought the influx
of visitors to Brazil for the
soccer World Cup introduced
the virus to South America.2015 Doctors confirm
the link between the Zika virus
and microcephaly.2016 Scientists report it can
be sexually transmitted. So far,
67 countries – including Fiji,
Samoa and Tonga – have
reported the presence of Zika.
More than 90 million people in
the world could become
infected, two million of them
women of childbearing age.When Gessica
Dos Santos
was 20-weeks
pregnant, she was
told her baby boy
had a severe case
of microcephaly.
He died soon after
being born from
respiratory failure.