By now, you have probably heard of the Zika virus. This is a mosquito born disease that is rarely fatal but can lead to serious birth defects should a pregnant woman contract the disease. The World Health Organization on monday is holding an emergency meeting to decide whether or not to declare the Zika outbreak a global health emergency. In the meantime, the WHO says that as many as 4 million people could contract the disease throughout the Americas. 

It is likely to spread to every country in the Americas except Canada, and could have devastating social and economic consequences throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Countries like Haiti that have weak health systems to begin with could be overwhelmed by this fast spreading pathogen. And countries in the Caribbean that rely on tourism could see their economies take huge hits should people cancel vacations amid concerns about Zika. 

Oh, and it affects poor people the worst. But we have always known that. 

Zika is what’s known as a “neglected tropical disease,” or NTD. These disease are so-called ‘neglected’ because they have historically only affected the poorest people on the planet, and therefore there has not been any major push to come up with vaccines or diagnostics to confront their spread. For most of history, the wealthier world could safely ignore these disease and not fear the repercussions.  

But these days, tropical diseases can no longer be safely neglected. Thanks in part to climate change, they are spreading quickly from poor communities in the global south to the rest of the world. Dengue, another mosquito borne virus, used to be contained to a few countries in Asia. Now, it’s all over Latin America. And, in 2013 cases started popping up in Florida.

Zika has the potential to be a major public health emergency here in the USA and elsewhere in the Americas. There could be many, many children born nine months from now with severe birth defects because people often times don’t even know that they have the disease. There’s also some evidence that Zika may be spread sexually. But the scientific literature around the disease is sparse. It’s never been sufficiently studied. 

Now, any response to the disease is going to be hampered by the fact that we know very little about the virus. And we know very little precisely because it’s never before threatened large numbers of people in the developed world. 

It turns out we ignore these diseases of the poor at our own peril.