HEALTHCARE
ZIKA AND BEYOND : HOW TO COMMUNICATE ABOUT CRISES
ANTHONY S . FAUCI , M . D . Director , National Institute of Allergic and Infectious Diseases , National Institute of Health
During the Ebola outbreak , we admitted two patients infected with the virus to the NIH Clinical Center . People would ask me , “ My goodness , are you putting us at great risk ?” So I would ask them , “ How did you get to work this morning ?” They would answer by saying something to the effect of , “ Well , I got on the Beltway and drove to the NIH .” This is a highspeed road that encircles Washington , DC , and carries more than 200,000 vehicles per day . I would point out , “ Well , your commute posed a greater risk to you than an Ebola patient at the Clinical Center .” We live in a world where we take risks every day . When you have been taking a risk every day , for the last 20 or 30 years , you may be fully aware of the risk , but you have learned to live with it and it does not bother you . However , it is very interesting to me how people react when they are confronted with a new risk . When a new risk emerges , especially if it is highly publicized , people often start to consider the new risk to be more significant than others that , in reality , pose a greater threat . This is human nature . We saw it with Ebola , we saw it here in Washington , D . C ., with the anthrax attacks , and we are starting to see it now with Zika . Zika virus is not actually new . It was first recognized in 1947 in a monkey in the Zika forest of Uganda . It was not known to infect humans until 1952 , and it stayed under the radar screen for a long time . The virus circulated relatively unnoticed in areas of Africa and Southeast Asia until 2007 , when it caused an outbreak on the Yap Islands in Micronesia . In 2013 , the virus caused a much larger outbreak in French Polynesia . Despite this spread , few people paid much attention to the virus because the disease it caused was thought to be mild . Now , of course , the situation has changed . The current outbreak that started in Brazil last year has provided new evidence that Zika virus can also
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