Article ID: CBB603527462

Imperfect diagnosis: The truncated legacies of Zika testing (October 2021)

unapi

When the Zika virus burst onto the international scene in the second half of 2015, the development of diagnostic tools was seen as an urgent global health priority. Diagnostic capacity was restricted to a small number of reference laboratories, and none of the few available molecular or serological tests had been validated for extensive use in an outbreak setting. In the early weeks of the crisis, key funders stepped in to accelerate research and development efforts, and the WHO took responsibility for steering diagnostic standardization, a role it had successfully played during the West Africa Ebola virus outbreak. Yet when the WHO declared the end of the Zika Public Health Emergency of International Concern in November 2016, diagnostic capacity remained patchy, and few tools were available at the scale required in the countries that bore the brunt of the epidemic, particularly Brazil. This article analyses the limited impact of global R&D efforts on the availability of Zika diagnostic options where they were most needed and for those most vulnerable: women who might have been exposed to the virus during their pregnancy and children born with suspected congenital Zika syndrome. The truncated legacies of testing during the Zika crisis reveal some of the fault lines in the global health enterprise, particularly the limits of ‘emergency R&D’ to operate in geopolitical contexts that do not conform to the ideal type of a humanitarian crisis, or to tackle technical issues that are inextricably linked to domestic struggles over the scope and distribution of biological citizenship. Diagnostic shortcomings, we argue, lie at the heart of the stunning transformation, in less than two years, in the status of Zika: from international public health emergency to neglected disease.

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Authors & Contributors
Hochman, Gilberto
Palmer, Steven Paul
Hillman, Alexandra
Abeysinghe, Sudeepa
Arbex, Danieli
Avila-Pires, Fernando Dias de
Journals
História, Ciências, Saúde---Manguinhos
Social Studies of Science
Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society
Science Communication
Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/Bulletin Canadienne d'Histoire de la Medecine
East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal
Publishers
Johns Hopkins University Press
Concepts
Public health
Medicine
Science and technology studies (STS)
Diagnosis
Disease and diseases
Vaccines; vaccination
People
Cruz, Oswaldo Gonçalves
Fajardo, Francisco
Pereira, Miguel
Bolsonaro, Jair
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century
20th century, early
Places
Brazil
Africa
Costa Rica
India
Taiwan
Canada
Institutions
World Health Organization (WHO)
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