The Chikungunya virus - also known as Chik-V for short has now been identified in Mexico. Today, international news reports said that the Mexican Undersecretary for Health confirmed that a citizen who travelled to Antigua and Barbuda got sick a few weeks after he came back. So, that means Chik-V has appeared in Salvador and Mexico - one a neighbor to Belize, the other nearby. In fact, in just a few months, it has spread from a single country to 28, and counting; there are 180,000 suspected cases, 5 thousand cases confirmed and 21 deaths.
And, local health authorities say it's not if, but when Chik-V will come to Belize. But it hasn't come yet. That was underscored at a press conference at the Central Health region today:..
Dr. Michael Pitts, Director of Health Service
"There is no known case of Chikungunya in Belize. We cannot say that we will prevent Chikungunya from coming to the country. Our goal is to try and reduce it to a small number as possible. It's not if, it will come here and because we won't be able to get rid of the vector we will have to continue manage that - those cases."
And managing it means the ministry of health and you have to keep down mosquito populations. The Ministry says it will do its part: its fleet of vehicles for mosquito spraying has recently been increased - and they seemed ready to blitz the adult mosquitoes and the larvae:...
Dr. Michael Pitts, Director of Health Service
"Our objective ladies and gentlemen is to mitigate. We can't eradicate mosquitoes but we can control the population to tolerable levels."
Kim Bautista - Vector Control Chief of Operation
"Funding for the vector control program has tripled the budget that we would see on an annual basis. The European Union funding alone combine with government and PAHO input runs somewhere around 2.2 million Belize dollars. The global fund project runs roughly for this year about $200.000 Belize dollars. What that has allowed us to do is the immediately the procurement of vehicles to the tune of just about $700,000 Belize dollars, foggers, just about $100,000 Belize dollars."
Dr. Michael Pitts, Director of Health Service
"Those vehicles are now in country and will be release by the agencies to us sometime over next week. This is very timely. We are now entering into the full rainy season I think it is very strategic and timely that we have these vehicles and we will bring them into full commission over the next week or so. In addition to that we have acquire 6 ULV machine - additional ULV machine. The last time we spoke we had 16 functional, so we now augmenting those to where we have 22. This means that we will be able to have machines in all district towns operating both in the urban and the rural areas."
Francis Westby, Technical Advisor - Dengue Program, MOH
"There is a blitz that we are planning for next week when we get the 9 vehicles running where we will be spraying Belize City taking out all the vehicles for a couple day to cover all the areas. We tend to leave it and say it's the responsibility of the 
Ministry of Health, it isn't. The public needs to do their share. 80% of what can be done to control the mosquito population can be done by the general public. All the ULV spraying, all the larva-ciding that we do will not control the mosquitoes unless the general public do what they should do; keep the properties clean. I have a simple thing that I always advise to do is when you cook, take a tablespoon of cooking oil and throw it in the drains in front of your property or whatever stagnant water you have around."
And so they've told you what you can do to prevent it, but cases will arise - and so what symptoms should you be on the lookout for? Dr. Francis Morey explained those:
Dr. Francis Murray, Focal Point for Communicable Disease, MOH
"Chikungunya, as a re-emerging disease, presents itself with high fever of more than thirty-eight degrees, severe arthritis or what is referred to also as bending illness. This arthritis is characteristic that it affects mostly the small joints, those of the 
wrists, the hands but it also may affect the larger joints and has a characteristic that is said to be migratory. The rash that it presents is much more severe than that of dengue. Both diseases may present themselves in a same patient but to be able to differentiate between the two the joint pains in Chikungunya is of the smaller joints. It does affect the bigger joints but it also has a characteristic of being migratory and what it does for example, it swells up the joint, you can also see swelling of the joints. Its debilitating - the person can't get up and bends."
38 degrees Celsius is 100.4 Fahrenheit.
Notably, there has been no increase in dengue cases this year: in 1500 tests performed only 200 cases have been confirmed.
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