Friday, January 20, 2006

Another disease to worry about...duh

I ran across the link, reporting a "new crippling disease" spread by mosquitoes...
Chikungunya virus
.

Doctors on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion are battling an epidemic of a crippling mosquito-borne disease that has no known cure, French Health Minister Xavier Bertrand said.
About 7,200 cases of "chikungunya" had been recorded, including 1,600 cases last week alone, the minister told the French upper house.

Actually, it's been around for years, and since it looks like Dengue (but isn't fatal) it is probably underreported. Both make you hurt (Dengue fever is called "break bone fever" because of this symptom), but Dengue can turn hemorrhagic and kill you, but this one merely has prolonged arthralgias (joint pain)...

Some Peace Corps volunteers got it in the Philippines twenty years ago...no recent reports here, but Malaysia had an outbreak in 1999...

Vad's Corner has a lot of links on it...

So add this one to your "we're all gonna die" list of problems...

And if you can't pronounce the name, you can call it by it's other name: The Buggy Creek Virus...

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