Reuters - 1 hour 12 minutes
ago
Six infected by
Chikungunya virus in Singapore
SINGAPORE, Jan 17 - Six people in Singapore have been infected by
the mosquito-borne Chikungunya virus, the Ministry of Health said
on Thursday.
"This is the first instance of local transmission of the disease.
Previous cases were imported, where patients caught the virus
overseas and brought it back to Singapore," a Ministry of Health
spokeswoman told Reuters.
Two patients have been admitted to the isolation ward of the
Communicable Disease Centre.
All six patients were living in close proximity to each other in
the southeastern part of the city-state. "It's still a localised
infection at the moment," she added.
The Ministry of Health has begun to screen people living or working
in the same area.
Chikungunya fever, like dengue fever, is a mosquito-borne disease,
characterised by sudden onset of fever, chills, headache, nausea,
vomiting, joint pain, back pain, and sometimes a rash.
Most symptoms last for three to 10 days, but joint pains may last
for weeks to months.
The Chikungunya virus was carried mostly by the Aedes aegypti
mosquito. It caused an epidemic that began in Kenya in 2004 and
spread to several Indian Ocean islands including the Comoros,
Mauritius, the Seychelles, Madagascar, Mayotte and Reunion.
On tiny Reunion Island alone, more than a third of the population
-- 266,000 people -- were infected, and 260 died.
