Zika Virus Causes Pregnancy Dilemmas in Outbreak Areas Due to Birth Defect Fears

— -- The Zika virus has put health officials across the globe in a difficult position about giving advice to couples wanting to start a family. The virus seems to cause minor infections in most people but in pregnant women it has been found to cause serious birth defects in their babies.

The quick spread of the virus through South and Central America, the fact that there is no vaccine, and its connection to birth defects has highlighted the difficult decisions couple in the affect areas must make when it comes to family planning.

This week, the World Health Organization took the extraordinary step of advising people in areas with Zika transmission to "consider delaying pregnancy," due to the spread of the virus. The recommendation shows how the WHO is trying to balance public health with the realities of family planning in areas with limited access to birth control.

Before the Zika outbreak, one of the only cases of a health agency warning couples to defer pregnancy occurred when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised in 1985 that women with HIV should avoid getting pregnant due to the likelihood that the virus could be spread to the child. That advisory has since been rescinded.

Health departments in certain Zika-affected countries, including El Salvador, have advised residents to delay pregnancy. The CDC has not issued any warning or advisory about delaying pregnancy, since there have been no reports so far of the Zika virus being spread from insects to humans within the U.S.

"These are very complex, deeply personal decisions, and we are communicating the potential risks of Zika virus infection during pregnancy for people who live in areas with active transmission," the CDC said in a statement. "We are encouraging health care providers to have conversations with women and their partners about pregnancy planning, their individual circumstances and strategies to prevent unintended pregnancies."

The WHO statement is not exactly a warning to avoid pregnancy but experts say that health officials must balance public health with the reality of living in these areas, where birth control may not be easily accessible.

Dr. Carleigh Krubiner, a faculty research scholar at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, said that a issuing warning to delay pregnancy may not a be an effective way to handle the spread of the virus and its effects.

"The new recommendation issued by the WHO that men and women living in Zika endemic areas consider delaying pregnancy is not inherently bad in principle, especially in light of that fact that we do not yet have other effective means to prevent infection, such as a vaccine," Krubiner told ABC News.

"However, it is unlikely that this recommendation will have much of an impact," Krubiner added. "While the recommendation also calls for access to adequate information and contraceptive methods, the reality is that many women in Latin America and the Caribbean will continue to have unmet family planning needs, particularly those who are the poorest and most marginalized."

She emphasized that this is just an interim guideline to "hold the tide" of pregnant women in affected areas until officials can improve mosquito control and create a vaccine.