Liz Szabo

USA TODAY

As the number of pregnant women infected with the Zika virus grows, hospitals around the country are preparing to treat both them and their babies, who are at high risk of suffering from a wide range of serious birth defects.

Children’s National Health System in Washington announced Monday that it's launching a new Congenital Zika Virus Program, which will advise pregnant women infected with the virus, as well as treat babies affected by Zika. Doctors around the country will be able to refer patients to the hospital for help, hospital spokeswoman Diedtra Henderson said.

The hospital has treated five pregnant women with Zika and four babies, said Roberta DeBiasi, chief of the infectious disease at Children’s National. One of those cases was described in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The new Zika program will provide blood testing and access to a multidisciplinary team of specialists, including pediatric neurologists, physical therapists, infectious disease experts and neurodevelopmental physicians. Children's National can perform fetal MRI exams, which can provide pregnant women with earlier answers about how Zika has affected their fetus's health compared with ultrasounds, said Adre du Plessis, director of the Fetal Medicine Institute at Children's National. The hospital aims to offer women "one-stop shopping," to resolve their questions — and anxiety — quickly, without forcing women to return over and over to see different specialists.

"Our goal is to get them all the answers we possibly can at that first visit," du Plessis said.

Children's National hopes to be able to handle a "large volume of cases" in case of a wide outbreak, du Plessis said.

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In Houston, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital have also begun a specialized program for people affected by Zika, said Peter Hotez, a professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine.

With its steamy summer climate and history of mosquito-borne diseases, Houston is at high risk for Zika outbreaks, Hotez said. So are other communities along the Gulf Coast, where the mosquitoes that spread Zika, the Aedes aegypti, are abundant.

"Hospitals with robust maternal-fetal medicine divisions will be at the forefront in helping unravel of the intricacies of Zika and its impact on pregnancy," said Amesh Adalja, senior associate at the Center for Health Security at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "I suspect many of these hospitals will develop similar programs."

The Zika virus can cause microcephaly, a condition in which babies are born with abnormally small heads and, in most cases, incomplete brain development, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Zika is also linked to eye problems in newborns, which could lead to blindness, and a variety of neurological problems, including Guillain-Barre syndrome, in which the body's immune system attacks nerve cells, causing paralysis.

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Many doctors are concerned that these problems, which are obvious at birth, are just the tip of the iceberg, and that children infected with Zika in the womb could suffer developmental delays as they grow up.

More than 500 people in the continental U.S. have been diagnosed with Zika virus, including 48 pregnant women, according to the CDC. Most of these patients were infected while traveling outside the U.S. Ten were infected through sex with someone who traveled to an area where Zika is spreading. The true number of Zika cases in the U.S. could be much larger. Only about 20% of people infected by Zika develop symptoms, which include a rash, fever, join pain and pink eye.

Zika has hit U.S. territories much harder. Nearly 1,000 people have been diagnosed with Zika in Puerto Rico, including 128 pregnant women, according to the island's health department.

Puerto Rico, hard hit by Zika, reports first microcephaly case