The Zika virus was the topic among more than 350 state health officials in Phoenix on Tuesday. The goal of the meeting was to prevent a widespread outbreak of the disease here.
The 2016 Arizona Zika Summit covered a wide range of topics, from prevention and identification to outbreak communication planning and even legal issues.
Officials in Arizona already have experience handling outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases like West Nile virus, but Arizona Department of Health Services director Dr. Cara Christ said dealing with Zika will be a little different.
"We’ve had to bring in maternal and child health and birth defects [specialists] because of the impacts," she said. "It’s been linked to birth defects in pregnant women who have passed it onto their fetus."
There have been three confirmed cases of the Zika virus in Arizona so far. All of those were in people who traveled to an impacted country. Christ said there will be more cases in the coming months, but added she’s confident the state can keep it from becoming widespread.
