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 At All City, a combination art gallery and pediatrics clinic, artist
Shaun Crawford was hired on Thursday to create illustrations that
will be made into an educational brochure.
"I decided to draw the mosquitoes and make them a little more
aggressive than my drawings usually are that I do here," Crawford
told Reuters Television.
While the sketches got the attention of the clinic's toddler
patients, their greater aim is to help raise the awareness of their
parents, who may be unaware of the dangers of Zika.
Among the dangers of the mosquito-born disease is microcephaly, a
rare birth defect which is marked by abnormally small heads and
developmental problems.
Health officials said on Tuesday that at least 483 people in New
York had contracted the virus, including 49 pregnant women.
All the cases were either travel-related, or acquired through sexual
contact. But there is concern that with New York's extensive
Dominican and Puerto Rican populations, the virus could easily
spread if residents travel or family members visit.
The Zika outbreak was first detected in Brazil last year and has
since spread to more than 50 countries and territories, many of them
in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The clinic's physician, Dr. Vladimir Barayev, said that the media
had been flooded with information about Zika in a verbal form.
"When you put an image with something like Zika in particular, it
opens people's eyes," he said. "Like, 'Oh, I never realized that, no
matter how much I heard about Zika, I never realized.'"
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Even though the mosquitoes in Crawford's sketches are harmless,
their message is clear: Zika is a viable threat.
Florida health officials have found evidence of local Zika virus
transmission in Miami Beach, one of the world's most popular tourist
destinations, a source familiar with the investigation said on
Thursday.
Zika is transmitted to people through the bite of an infected Aedes
aegypti mosquito. The insects are found in almost all the countries
in the Americas.
(Writing by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Bernard Orr)
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