“Extended childcare”? Reflections on the science of the Zika virus

Abstract

In 2015, Brazil was the scene of an event that attracted global attention: the Zika virus epidemic. This pathogen arrived in the tropics, bringing with it something new to the Zika medical literature: the birth of children with changes in fetal development resulting from vertical transmission of the virus to fetuses. The phenomenon, which was classified as a health emergency, began to be widely studied and numerous studies were carried out with children born with changes associated with the Zika virus. This article analyzes a set of interviews conducted in 2022 with scientists who were directly involved in the response to this epidemic in the Metropolitan Region of Recife. As the research was mostly carried out with children, we reflect here on how this characteristic permeated the scientific work of the researchers involved. The main objective is to promote broader discussions about the act of carrying out research in terms of urgency, addressing questions about scientific relationships, especially between researchers and participants (Zika researchers and children diagnosed with the syndrome). A second objective is to think about how Child Anthropology can find fertile ground for dialogue with other areas that focus on children and childhood.