Two weeks shy of his first birthday, doctors began feeding Jose Wesley Campos through a nose tube because swallowing problems had left him dangerously underweight.
Learning how to feed is the baby’s latest struggle as medical problems mount for him and many other infants born with small heads to mothers infected with the Zika virus in Brazil.
“It hurts me to see him like this. I didn’t want this for him,” said Jose’s mother, Solange Ferreira, breaking into tears as she cradled her son.
A year after a spike in the number of newborns with the defect known as microcephaly, doctors and researchers have seen many of the babies develop swallowing difficulties, epileptic seizures and vision and hearing problems.
While more study is needed, the conditions appear to be causing more severe problems in these infants than in patients born with small heads because of the other infections…