Dateline: March 22

This week on SBS, Dateline follows the devastating impact of the Zika virus in Brazil, as seen through the eyes of three mothers whose children were born deformed.

“When the night comes, I ask myself, is this really happening to me?” Danielle Santos tells Amos on Tuesday’s Dateline.

Her son Juan Pedro is two-months-old, but microcephaly blamed on the Zika virus means his head is abnormally small and his brain underdeveloped.

There’s no way of knowing how his health will develop – children with microcephaly may face intellectual impairment, seizures or even blindness and deafness.

“He cries a lot, daily life with him is exhausting,” another mother Leticia Araújo da Silva says. “His father is not involved at all, he doesn’t care.”

She’s just 16, and as her adult life is only just beginning, she now faces a lifetime caring for her son Heitor.

It’s a tragic story being played out in the poorest communities across Brazil, where a lack of sanitation is the perfect breeding ground for the Zika-carrying mosquito.

Last year, some specialists in the city of Recife were seeing as many cases of microcephaly in a week as they used to see in an entire year.

But what is not in doubt is the passion these young mothers have for their children.

“As soon as we saw her, it was love at first sight,” 17-year-old Cleane Serpa tells Amos as she cradles Maria Eduarda.

Tuesday at 9.30pm on SBS.