Chikungunya outbreak traced back to India

NIH had issued an alert in October, say epidemiologists

ISLAMABAD: Epidemiologists have linked the outbreak of Chikungunya in Karachi with its outbreak in India a few months ago. chikunguna was notified for the first time by the National Institute of Health (NIH) after three patients were tested positive for this mosquito-borne disease.



Epidemiologists said that NIH had issued an alert in October this year after the chikungunya outbreak in India, but no preventive measures were taken at airports, railway stations or the Pakistan-India border.

A senior epidemiologist, working closely with the NIH, said: “There are chances that an infected person or mosquitoes traveled to Pakistan, thereby becoming the potential source of its spread,” he said. He said that there was a likelihood that the disease would spread to other parts of the country.



He warned that there were chances of an outbreak in areas where the temperature was still high.

“Tharparkar is highly vulnerable and there are chances that the infection entered Pakistan from this side,” said Prof Dr Muhammad Saleem Rana, the senior vector control expert at Lahore’s Contech School of Public Health.



“The high number of cases emerging from India should have served as warning but no preventive measures were taken,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 26^th, 2016.