May 2025 marked ten years since the Zika outbreak began in Brazil, with devastating consequences for thousands of pregnant women, many of those in the Northeast of Brazil.   

In that month, a published research article, a televised documentary and a television news series show the ethnographic fieldwork conducted by After the End researchers from Anis Bioetica and University of Brasilia in Brazil bringing the voices of those living in the shadow of Zika to the forefront.

In June 2025, a significant step forward was made in the legal arena with the introduction of one of the country's first comprehensive reparations laws related to health emergencies, providing reparations to the children affected by Zika congenital syndrome.

Debora Diniz, Luciana Brito and their team first visited the families in Alagoas state in 2015 and have since followed their journey navigating an unknown path beyond the declared ‘End’ of the epidemic.  

The dramaturgy of a health emergency: Women’s lived experiences of the Zika epidemic in Brazil presents the temporalities experienced by three women whose children, born at the peak of the official calendar, died between two and four years after the end of the epidemic. The authors seek to understand how the temporalities of motherhood and politics are intertwined with the dramaturgy of emergencies. 

BBC News Brasil asked How are children with microcephaly doing a decade after the Zika epidemic? focusing on the experiences of mothers from an association of women set up to support each other as mothers of children affected by Zika syndrome.

10 years of Zika: meet the mothers of children with microcephaly one of five news pieces from Latin America’s largest TV network TV Globo, Debora Diniz explains the enormous challenges faced by Zika mothers particularly in the light of the recent law passed in Brazil on compensation for Zika.

BBC News Brasil news coverage of the law to provide reparation to children affected by Zika congenital syndrome, shows how proud the women are of their achievement in pushing for the law to be passed, referencing After the End project.