Public Health Professor Insists Rio Olympics Must not Proceed due to Zika Virus

Public Health Professor Insists Rio Olympics Must not Proceed due to Zika Virus - Health Council

Amir Attaran, a professor in the School of Public Health and the School of Law at the University of Ottawa, is voicing his opinion on why the Rio Olympics shouldn’t happen. Why you say?

“The risk of [accelerating the spread] of Zika is simply too great to bear.”

“No one is saying cancel the games. But is it at the end of the day sensible to run the risk of a global epidemic of, let’s face it, brain-damaged babies, when that could be avoided by simply postponing the games or moving them elsewhere? This is not a question of worrying about whether individual athletes get sick or individual tourists. For any of those individuals, the risk is quite low. But when you multiply by 500,000, the odds are extremely high that somebody will take the disease elsewhere and seed a new outbreak.”

Read the full article: Public Health Professor: Because Of Zika, Rio Olympics ‘Must Not Proceed’