African viral disease spreads

Joe de Capua in Voice of America News: t’s not an illness you hear much about, but it can make a person feel miserable for years. And it’s sometimes fatal. It’s spreading and scientists describe the mosquito-borne disease as a major public health threat around the world.

It’s called Chikungunya. The World Health Organization says the name comes from the Kimakonde language spoken along the Mozambique-Tanzania border. It means “to become contorted.” The name describes those suffering from the disease because they are often stooped over.

Dr. Scott Weaver, director of the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity at the University of Texas Medical Branch, said, “It’s a mosquito-borne virus. It originated in Africa and still circulates there now. Its original transmission cycle involves mosquitos in forest habitats and non-human primates. That’s the main vertebrae hosts. But periodically it emerges from that cycle into an urban cycle involving people and different kinds of mosquitos.”

The most recent emergence from the African cycle, he said, occurred in 2004. “It’s not normally life threatening. There are a few fatal cases. The ca
se fatality rates recently have been estimated at about one in 1,000 people. But even though it’s not normally fatal, it’s a very painful and debilitating disease that can incapacitate people for weeks to months or even pain can persist for years.”...

Cryoelectron microscopy reconstruction of Chikungunya virus. From EMDB entry 5577.  Image by A2-33 , Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license