Zika Virus: What You Need to Know

Faculty experts at LSU Health New Orleans schools of Medicine and Public Health, along with Dr. Rebekah Gee, Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, plan to share the latest information about the Zika Virus and what people along the Gulf Coast need to know before the virus reaches our area at an event this evening at 5:30 p.m., at the LSU Health New Orleans Human Development Center, 411 South Prieur Street, first floor auditorium.

Dr. Steve Nelson, Dean of the School of Medicine, will moderate a panel of HSC and DHH experts: Dr. John England, Chair of Neurology in our School of Medicine, chairs the World Federation of Neurology’s Zika Work Group. He was an invited consultant at the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Zika meeting in Geneva in March and helped to draft WHO documents regarding the neurological complications of Zika. He has been consulted by Honduras’ President and Minister of Health and has been invited to prepare Europe’s neurologists at the end of the month, ahead of residents returning home from the Olympics. Dr. Jim Diaz, who directs the Environmental / Occupational Health Sciences Program in our School of Public Health, was the only person from Louisiana invited by the Institute of Medicine to participate in a meeting in Washington, D.C.  to prepare the US for Zika. Dr. Fred Lopez specializes in Infectious Diseases. Dr. Robert Maupin, a Maternal-Fetal Medicine specialist in our Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, was invited to review Zika at the South Central OB/GYN Society’s Annual Meeting. Dr. Rebekah Gee, Secretary of DHH, oversees preparations for the state’s response.

As a service to the Health Sciences Center and medical communities outside of New Orleans, we will stream the event live online and then post it afterwards. The web page is located at the following link:

Zika Virus: What You Need to Know 5/23/2016 http://lsuh.sc/ZikaPanel

COMPUTER ACCESS:

- Those connecting from a computer may be prompted to download and install Silverlight 5 if it is not already installed. The following links are useful if you don’t already have Silverlight installed:

• Preinstall from http://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/handlers/getsilverlight.ashx
• View compatible operating systems and browsers at https://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/locale/en-us/html/installation-win-SL5.html

MOBILE DEVICE ACCESS:

- No app is needed. Users simply need to use the links on the Zika Virus: What You Need to Know 5/23/2016 web page.

Please make every effort to attend the event. New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are seen as especially vulnerable because the mosquito species that carries the virus thrives here. Armed with information, we can be better prepared to protect our patients, families and our own health.