The World Health Organization published on its alert page on epidemic outbreaks, a brief note, in which he confirmed in our country, the presence of cases of the disease.

In accordance with the note, on 27 November, the focal point of the Regulamento Sanitario Internacional of the MPPS, received the report of 7 suspected cases, of which 4 turned out confirmed, in the INHRR, (national reference laboratory), after practicing them to it the test of PCR-RT. The results were confirmed by the National Institute of Health of Colombia. The affected people are 4 women between 40 and 55 years, that dwell in bordering municipio Brazil. The authorities of the Ministry of Health of Venezuela are implementing prevention and control measures. Research entán in development. (sic)

Since then, 6 weeks, the MPPS has not offered information on the evolution in our country, of this emerging infectious disease.

It concerns to us, that being Guillain-Barré syndrome (SGB), a relatively rare complication, in general, and associated to the zika, (in the outbreak of the Polynesia French, in 2013, 0.5% of the cases with zika presented symptoms of SGB), 42 cases of SGB in 8,200 cases of zika. In Brazil 121 cases with SGB and other neurological manifestations have been identified in patients with zika. The Ministry of Health of El Salvador, in turn, has recorded 46 patients with SGB complicating patients with diagnosis of zika in the 6 weeks that takes the epidemic in that country. The number of cases of zika reach 3,836. That is 1.09% of clinical cases of zika have undergone SGB. Now, in Venezuela, the identification of some 30 cases of SGB in two weeks, after a similar acute febrile disease to zika, indicates us an abnormal situation, (characterized by a greater number of cases of SGB of what is expected). For example, if every 55,000 inhabitants estimate a global incidence of SGB of 1 x to 1 x every 90,000 inhabitants have in Venezuela at this time between 1.3 and 2.1 times more cases of SGB of what is expected.

We would should in our country identify, in a year between 340 and 566 new cases of SGB, associates to all the causes and on less than 15 days we have received information on colleagues, of approximately, some 30 cases, when what is expected for this period is between 14.1 and 23.5 cases of SGB.

In the assumption to be demonstrated that the cases of observed SGB are associated with zika, we can estimate a number of cumulative cases of zika, at this time in Venezuela, not less than 6,000 on 15 days, to be given a similar percentage of cases with zika that present SGB as occurred in the Polynesia French. The MPPS has omitted every epidemiological information on zica from 11 December 2015 when the minister Happiness recognized the cases disseminated by WHO, 3 weeks previously.

It is possible that the increase in the number of cases of SGB associated with zika is explained when a population as ours never before was exposed to the virus and when there exists the cocirculación of the virus zika and other flavivirus as dengue; this also occurred in the Polynesia French, where two serotypes of dengue circulated simltáneamente with the virus zika.

On 27 November 2015, the National IHR Focal Point of Venezuela received notification of 7 suspected cases of Zika virus infection. The diagnoses were made by the national reference laboratory, the "Rafael Rangel" National Institute of Hygiene. Four samples tested positive for Zika virus.

http:/www.who.int/…/ don/03-december-2015-zika-venezuela/en/