"It breaks my heart to see these children and their parents at the Sister Dulce, a Catholic hospital in Salvador, where a non-governmental organization provides care for the poor," writes AFP's Sao Paolo-based correspondent Natalia Ramos, who traveled to the Brazilian region to report on the spread of the Zika virus.

"Each case of microcephaly is unique and the degree of the damage depends on the zone of the brain that is affected. But it’s not an exaggeration to say that each of these babies will become a handicapped child and then adult, in families that have very few resources to take care of them."