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Rio 2016 Olympics Must Be Moved/Postponed: Zika Threat Too Big, 125 Scientists Tell WHO
- Updated: May 28, 2016
One Canadian scientist said it before. Now 125 senior experts have joined forces in an open letter to the World Health Organisation: the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro should be postponed or moved because of the risk from the Zika virus.
In an open letter to the World Health Organisation, 125 academics from institutions including various British universities as well as Harvard and Yale in the US point to new findings about the virus that make it “unethical” to continue with the Games, Olympic and Paralympic, in Rio this August.
Rio’s mosquito eradication programme had failed to slow the spread of the virus, they note. There is a high risk, they say, of a public health emergency and more children being born with skull and other deformities resulting from hosting the Games in Rio.
The letter heaps pressure on the International Olympic Committee and the organisers of Brazil’s Games, which start on August 5. Both have tried to reassure teams and tourists alike.
The international group of academics include bioethicists, lawyers and professors of medicine. Athletes, they say, have been put in an unacceptable position in which they are being forced to “choose between risking disease and participating in a competition that many have trained for their whole lives”.
The greater concern was the vast number of ticket-holding spectators set to flock to Rio without the back-up of the kind of controlled environments some athletes (those on the professional teams from wealthier nations). The scientists write:
“Our greater concern is for global health. The Brazilian strain of zika virus harms health in ways that science has not observed before. An unnecessary risk is posed when 500,000 foreign tourists from all countries attend the Games, potentially acquire that strain and return home to places where it can become …
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