The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) is telling countries in the Americas to take more steps to diagnose and treat chikungunya because there are more cases in some places and because the Southern Cone is about to enter its peak transmission season.
The Aedes mosquito, which also spreads dengue and Zika, is responsible for Chikungunya fever.
It can cause a high fever, headache, and pain in the joints and muscles. There isn’t a vaccine or a specific treatment for the disease that has been approved. Rarely, it can cause severe symptoms and death, mostly in pregnant women, children under the age of one, older adults, and people with other health problems.
PAHO’s epidemiological alert, which came out on February 13, said that the disease caused over 137,000 cases and 12 deaths in 2021. However, last year, the number of cases almost doubled and 95 deaths were reported in 13 countries and territories in the region, most of them in Brazil.
In the first four weeks of 2023, there were 30,707 cases of chikungunya, and 14 people died from it. Most of the cases were in Paraguay.
PAHO has asked its member states to keep improving their surveillance, triage, diagnosis, and treatment of chikungunya and other diseases spread by mosquitoes.
The organization also asked countries to improve their health services and get ready for outbreaks by making plans for screening and reorganizing services and making care networks stronger.
The surveillance guidelines include suggestions for how to do the right kind of sampling and how to set up the lab for molecular testing (RT-PCR) to confirm a diagnosis, taking into account the possibility of other diseases.
PAHO also suggests that different kinds of care be given to patients at different levels of care and at different stages of infection. This may mean that health workers need to be trained in diagnosis and case management.
The best way to avoid getting chikungunya is to avoid getting bitten by mosquitoes. The main way to stop transmission is to get people to work together to reduce and get rid of places where mosquitoes can breed. If someone thinks they might have chikungunya, they should go to a health clinic right away for help.
