The European Medicines Agency (EMA) announced Monday the creation of a group of experts Zika to accelerate the development of treatments and vaccines against the virus causing the epidemic in Latin America.
"There is currently no vaccine or treatment able to protect or treat infection of Zika virus that has been approved (by health authorities) or the subject of clinical trials," says the European agency in a statement.
States that decided to create a group of experts after the World Health Organization (WHO) has described the 1 February to the epidemic of "public health emergency of global reach."
The panel shall be to encourage research of anti-Zika formulating views on scientific and regulatory issues.
The EMA should contact companies already started working on treatments or vaccines and review all new data collected about the virus to enable rapid response to this public health crisis.
Transmitted by the bite of Aedes mosquito, it is suspected to be the cause of zika congenital malformations in newborns whose mothers were infected during pregnancy.
So far Brazil is the world most affected by the epidemic Zika, with 1.5 million patients, followed by Colombia with 22,600 cases country.