Three Viruses that knocked the world down

 File: Women campaigning on HIV/AIDS awareness.


There are lot of viruses that surfaced during 2016 and most, if not all are deadly. Scroll down to check out the virus that almost knocked the world.

Zika
Zika virus is a deadly disease.While many people with Zika display mild symptoms that they don’t know they are infected, a surge of babies born with microcephaly proved that the virus is anything but harmless. Pregnant women with Zika are at risk of giving birth to babies with microcephaly, meaning they have abnormally small heads, which often signifies arrested brain development. The zika virus is a a contagious disease that is passed on by mosquitoes and sex with an infected person.

Polio
In Nigeria, the polio virus re-emerged in the violence-wracked northern part of the country, where it's hard to ensure that every child is vaccinated. Three children were diagnosed with polio just as Nigeria was thought to be approaching polio-free status.
The virus also exists in another conflict zone: along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Those behind the vaccination effort say they are determined to eliminate the disease. Polio infections have decreased by 99 percent since 1988, from about 350,000 cases then to less than three dozen in 2016.

HIV/AIDS
HIV is a disease, although not as mild as AIDS itself, is transmittable, either by sex or by using items like blade pin used by the infected person.  Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes of Health announced the start of a major trial of an experimental vaccine against the AIDS virus.
"An HIV vaccine is not going to be easy,” he said. “We may not even know if we're going to get a vaccine."
However, Fauci described the advances in AIDS treatment as nothing short of spectacular.
"Today, the combinations of therapies we have for individuals — for someone who is in their 20s and gets infected and comes in and gets on a combination of drugs — you could predict that they could live an additional 50 years,” he said. “That is one of the most extraordinary advances in the transition from basic research to an applicable intervention in any field of medicine."
If an effective vaccine is found, it could mean the end for a virus that has infected more than 70 million people and killed 35 million over the last half-century.