Chikungunya Outbreak Confined To Bagan Panchor Village

KUALA LUMPUR, April 4 (Bernama) -- Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek, Tuesday said the outbreak of rare mosquito-borne disease, Chikungunya, has so far only been detected in Bagan Panchor village in Pantai Remis, Perak and has not spread to any other places in the country.
"It's still confined there, I hope it would be contained," he said.
Speaking to reporters at the sideline of the MCA leaders dialogue session with Chinese community leaders in Bukit Kiara, Dr Chua said the ministry had deployed two top experts -- virologist Dr Chua Kaw Beng and physician Dr Christopher Lee, to help the relevant authorities to contain the disease even it was not fatal.
Dr Chua Kaw Beng is a renowned virologist who has detected the Chikungunya outbreak in Port Klang six years ago where 27 people were infected with the disease. Chikungunya was first described in Tanzania, Africa in 1952.
Dr Chua said several measures to contain the outbreak, believed to be brought in by foreign workers, working in the area had been implemented.
A team has been sent to work with the local authorities there to clean up the villages as the area has been found to have very high aedes breeding index (27 per cent) compared to other areas where the index would be normally around one per cent.
Other measures included setting up a mobile clinic in the village to provide treatment for those infected while the serious cases would be transferred to Taiping Hospital, he said, adding that the ministry hoped to contain the outbreak in the next 10 days.
So far, 200 villages have been infected with the Chikungunya with five of them warded at Taiping Hospital. However, four of them had been discharged yesterday, leaving only one patient still being hospitalised.
Dr Chua also expressed disappointment with private clinics there for not reporting the outbreak of Chikungunya much earlier to the ministry.
He said the ministry was told that the outbreak had occurred much earlier -- after the Chinese New Year but none of the cases had been reported to the Health department.
"We have never been alerted until March 26 when one GP (General Practitioner) alerted us that he saw a lot of cases on the same day.
To the private doctors, "when they see a lot of patients with the same complaint, they should alert us that there is in-fact an epidemic. They should not keep quiet," he said.
Dr Chua said if the Chikungunya outbreak was not detected early, it could contribute to the massive outbreak as recorded on the French island of Re'union in the Indian Ocean where about 157,000 residents, of the total population of 777,000 have been hit by the virus.
The name Chikungunya is derived from Swahili "that which bends up", referring to stooped posture developed as a result of arthritic symptoms of the disease. The symptoms included fever, rashes, arthritis affecting multiple joints and headache.