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Health expert are concerned that chikungunya fever — a debilitating mosquito - wear disease that was once confined to Africa and Asia — has now spread to the Caribbean and may before long begin to make its way across North and South America .
An infection with the chikungunya ( chik - un - GUN - ya ) computer virus cause grave pain , high febrility , headache , sickness , disgorgement and rash . The name is derived from an East African word for " that which crouch , " a reference to the posture adopt by infected people who are stoop over from intense joint nuisance .
The Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) can spread diseases such as chikungunya fever.
And though the disease ca n’t be propagate like a shot from person to person , a mosquito that bite a person who ’s infected with the virus can easily fan out the disease by biting another person , grant to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) . [ 7 Devastating infective Diseases ]
Thespread of chikungunyawas first reported by the World Health Organization ( WHO ) in December 2013 , after 10 residents on the Caribbean island of St. Martin were confirmed to have the disease .
In the month since then , chikungunya has spread to other Caribbean rural area , including pop holidaymaker destinations such as Guadeloupe , Martinique and the British Virgin Islands .
Will chikungunya circularize to the US ?
The disease is n’t unknown in the United States , but all old documented cases have been in people who traveled outside the United States to countries where chikungunya is established , and were not because of infected mosquito within the United States .
That may alter , however , since the mosquitos that gestate the virus — Aedes aegyptiandAedes albopictus — are already found in the United States . Some expert occupy that it ’s only a matter of clock time before chikungunya febricity spreads to the United States .
" We emphatically should be concern , " said Laura Harrington , a prof of entomology at Cornell University who specify in the spread of chikungunya and other tropic disease .
The death rate from chikungunya is fairly low — about 1 to 2 percent — " but it does stimulate a lot of discomfort , " Harrington tell Live Science . Most of the deaths cause by the disease are among the elderly or people with compromisedimmune systems .
And because the virus has an incubation full point of from two to 12 daylight , according to the CDC , people carrying the disease often wo n’t know they have it .
mood alteration and chikungunya
Another broker contributing to the spread of chikungunya is the gradual heating of the Earth ensue fromclimate modification . " I remember it can play a really important function , " Harrington said .
She remark that some of the hallmarks of clime change — specifically , an increase in rain and an increase in mean temperature — make perfect conditions for the spread of the two mosquitos that can convey the chikungunya computer virus .
A.albopictus , commonly have it away as theAsian Panthera tigris mosquito , is now well - establish in the southern United States , having arrived in the mid-1980s . And as the climate warms , " it ’s step by step moving north , " Harrington say — the mosquito is already regain as far northwards as New York City .
hold on the scatter
To combat the outspread ofchikungunya and other mosquito - borne diseases , experts urge pragmatic measures such as winnow out brook consistence of water ( where mosquitos often breed ) under potted plants and in spare tires , using mosquito nets , wearing long - sleeved shirts and long pant , and applyingmosquito repellant .
These tips are peculiarly important for mass who already have the contagion , since a mosquito can spread the disease to another soul through its raciness .
If there ’s any upside to the pain and misery of a chikungunya transmission , which only seldom lasts more than a week , it ’s this : Once a person is exposed to the virus , the consistency is protected from reinfection for a lifetime , scientists say .
