Lessons Learned from the Zika Virus Epidemics: A Mounting Demand for Adopting Public Health Informatics Tools and Technologies for Epidemiological Surveillance and Outbreak Containment

The Zika virus (ZIKV) was initially identified in Ugandan rhesus monkeys in 1947, but recent outbreaks have drawn global attention. This demands the adoption of innovative, multifaceted, and digital public health intervention strategies. We conducted extensive searches in prominent databases, like Medline, Ebsco, Science Direct, PubMed, Google Scholar, WHO publications, and Web of Science. Data were extracted using PRISMA and bibliometric analysis to construct the results.

ZIKV predominantly circulates between humans and Aedes mosquitoes. Several neurological anomalies, including adult Guillain-Barré syndrome, neonatal microcephaly, and other unfavourable pregnancy outcomes, have been identified. Recent epidemics have been attributed to numerous concomitant risk factors, like the expansion of international trade and travel, unplanned urbanisation, global warming, inadequate diagnostic tools, lack of potent therapeutic agents, and passive surveillance. The rapidly evolving digital landscape enables an ideal platform to adopt digital public health technologies and tools. They can precisely predict prevalence, trends, ecological monitoring, epidemiological surveillance, diagnosis, and case management to ensure sustainable epidemic containment.