Most people in the U.S. first heard of Zika virus about a year ago. It was October 2015 when officials in Brazil reported a possible association between infection with Zika virus and the birth defect microcephaly.
The virus, however, was first identified in Uganda in 1947, in monkeys. Several years later, in 1952, Zika virus was found in humans in the same area as well as in the United Republic of Tanzania. Outbreaks have occurred ever since, although infections in humans were limited to Africa and Asia.
The year 2007 marked the first large Zika virus outbreak, which took place on the remote Island of Yap, a tiny island in the Federated States of Micronesia.
