A nasty virus just landed on America’s doorstep.
Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, confirmed the arrival of “chikungunya” fever in the Caribbean. Frieden made the announcement Monday while talking to a group of West-based AHCJ Regional Health Journalism Fellows at the CDC in Atlanta.
News of two confirmed cases in the island of St. Martin in the West Indies was reported Friday by The Daily Herald following a press conference by health officials in the region.
Named from the phrase “that which bends up” in Mozambique’s Kimakondan language because of its symptoms, chikungunya was first isolated from a Tanzanian patient in 1953, according to the CDC. Chikungunya exhibits symptoms similar to the dengue virus, including fever, rashes, headache, nausea and muscle pain. The virus is also transmitted through mosquitoes.
Until recently, cases of chikungunya were primarily seen in Africa and Asia. No cases have been reported in the United States, making the Caribbean cases the closest confirmation yet in terms of proximity.
People within the infectious disease field have been warning about the arrival of chikungunya in the past seven years, Frieden said.
“Just in the last few days, we’ve seen the first case in the Western Hemisphere in the Caribbean,” Frieden said. “We face a perfect storm of vulnerability because the world is a closer and tighter place than ever.”
The H1N1 flu pandemic of 2009 is an example of how quickly diseases can spread. The CDC also identifies one new, previously unknown pathogen each year, such as the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS virus) in 2012. Add the rise of drug-resistant organisms to the mix and having strong systems in place to deal with infectious diseases is more important than ever, Frieden said.
“Any virus anywhere in the world is just a plane ride away, like we saw with SARS,” Frieden said. “The sweet spot for us is that implementation gap between what we know and what we need to do to stop a disease. Once we know how it can happen, where it can happen and how to stop it, then we’ll understand better how to prevent it.”
Here is additional information about chikungunya fever:
