Rio Olympics: Should we just call the whole thing off?

The Rio Olympics are less than 59 days away. More than 10,000 athletes from over 200 countries will be competing and a further 500,000 visitors from all over the world will descend on Brazil. But should we be going at all?

Concerns for not only athletes and the possible global health risk posed by the spread of the Zika virus has 150 public health experts and scientists calling for the Olympics to be delayed or moved.

Just this week, The World Health Organisation announced it will be holding an emergency meeting in coming weeks to evaluate the risks of holding the Olympics is Brazil in August.

"The problem we have is that in Rio, that is the heart of the Zika epidemic in Brazil," says Dr Amir Attaran, a leading world health professional.  

The Australian Olympic team's head doctor David Hughes says preparation for the games has been extremely difficult because of the health threats.

"I think we can safely say that this is the most medically challenging Olympics of the modern era and we've had to vaccinate the whole of the Olympic team against a range of potential diseases and so this is certainly going to be the most vaccinated Olympic team to leave Australia's shores."
Zika
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The Zika virus can cause significant birth defects which has been widely reported in the last year.

But the recent discovery that the virus can be sexually transmitted  has doctors warning young men and women to avoid pregancy up to 6 months after leaving a Zika hot-spot.

One step the Australian Olympic Committee is taking is making sure that practicing safe sex is in Rio is as easy as possible for athletes.

"Australia will be sending over 15 thousand condoms, there on the container at the moment going over to Rio and also this year the organising committee Rio 2016 are providing 450 thousand condoms which I think is about double the number that they provided in London," says Kitty Chiller, Australian Olympic Chef De Mission.

"I haven’t done the maths myself but I think it equates to 20 condoms per person for the entire duration of the games so there might be some exchanging perhaps shall we say during the games, if someone doesn’t want to utilise their full allocation of 20."

But according to the Australian Olympic Committee these are not just your run off the mill condoms.
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"The Australian team let's say, the have a special secret weapon," says Dr Jackie Fairley, StarPharma CEO.

"Well, the dual protect condom which is the condom that we're providing to the Australian Olympic team, is coated, it's the world's first anti viral condom. And it has this antiviral property because it's coated with a special lubricant called vivagel and vival gel has been developed to be highly active against sexually transmitted viruses, so HIV, genital herpes and human papillomavirus and we've also recently found that it's highly active against the Zika virus."

Makers of the so-called anti-viral condom, StarPharma and Ansell, admit no clinical trials have been done to test the ability of the condom to ward off the Zika virus.     

"You know when I, I can certainly understand, I've read that paper by the professor from Canada suggesting that the Rio Games might be shifted," says Dr Hughes.

"I'm the medical director of the Australian Olympic team, it's not in my remit or my powers to shift the games, my role is to play the cards that are in front of me. My personal belief is that there is no likelihood whatsoever that the games will be shifted."
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