Tracking the next pandemic: Avian Flu Talk |
Outbreak Caribbean Virus spreads |
Post Reply |
Author | |
Medclinician2013
Valued Member Joined: September 17 2013 Location: Carmel Status: Offline Points: 9020 |
Post Options
Thanks(0)
Posted: May 22 2014 at 12:49pm |
http://news.msn.com/in-depth/painful-and-rapid-spread-of-new-virus-in-caribbean
Hospitals and clinics throughout the Caribbean are seeing thousands of people with the same symptoms, victims of a virus with a long and unfamiliar name that has been spread rapidly by mosquitoes across the islands after the first locally transmitted case was confirmed in December. "You feel it in your bones, your fingers and your hands. It's like everything is coming apart," said 34-year-old Sahira Francisco as she and her daughter waited for treatment at a hospital in San Cristobal, a town in the southern Dominican Republic that has seen a surge of the cases in recent days. The virus is chikungunya, derived from an African word that loosely translates as "contorted with pain." People encountering it in the Caribbean for the first time say the description is fitting. While the virus is rarely fatal it is extremely debilitating. "It is terrible, I have never in my life gotten such an illness," said Maria Norde, a 66-year-old woman confined to bed at her home on the lush eastern Caribbean island of Dominica. "All my joints are in pain." Outbreaks of the virus have long made people miserable in Africa and Asia. But it is new to the Caribbean, with the first locally transmitted case documented in December in French St. Martin, likely brought in by an infected air traveler. Health officials are now working feverishly to educate the public about the illness, knock down the mosquito population, and deal with an onslaught of cases. comment: This is not ones and twos - this is thousands. This is an outbreak. |
|
Medclinician - not if but when - original
|
|
Post Reply | |
Tweet
|
Forum Jump | Forum Permissions You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot create polls in this forum You can vote in polls in this forum |