Action Ethnography on Care, Disability and Health Policy and Administration of Public Service for Women and Caretakers of Zika Virus Affected Children in Pernambuco, Brazil

Abstract

In Brazil, the Zika epidemic, a national and public health emergency declared in 2015, and in effect until early 2016, caused severe neurological damage to over three thousand newborn children (3.179 confirmed cases up to the fifteenth week of 2018), of which, by the same date, 451 were from the state of Pernambuco. The newborn evidenced microcephaly at birth based originally on observations from Pernambuco and Paraíba, were discovered to be part of a still uncharted conjuncture of symptoms which came to be known as the Congenital Syndrome of Zika Virus (CSZV) mobilizing mothers and their networks, health and social service professionals and workers, and researchers from diverse disciplines to find ways to understand, treat, alleviate and prevent the Syndrome. Since March of 2017 we have continued our CNPq research (begun in October of 2016), reinforced and made more widely applicable with the Newton Instituional Links grant. Our research team accompanied daily therapeutic itineraries of mothers with Zika-effected children, and observed different institutional therapeutic spaces.