While more than 15 organizations are working on a vaccine, it may be that the availability of one may come too late to stem the current outbreak, Dr. Kieny said, according to The New York Times. A researcher from the Butantan Institute in Brazil who also spoke at the Geneva conference said that the timeline for a viable vaccine to be distributed could easily be as long as three years.
Additionally, Dr. Kieny said the link between Zika and Guillian-Barré Syndrome, an autoimmune disease that can cause paralysis and is in some instances fatal, is highly probable. Definitive evidence of this link could appear within the next few weeks.
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