A much more real and present danger is Chikungunya - known as Chik-V. The outbreak of this virus has gone right through the Caribbean, and is now in the America's. It is widespread in Central America - and is literally knocking on Belize's door. Pitts explained:..
Dr. Michael Pitts, Director of Health Services
"While we don't know of any case of Chikungunya in Belize, I must tell you that since we spoke the last time, Chikungunya has move through the whole Caribbean chain. It certainly has entered into Miami Florida area. We have seen Chikungunya now in Salvador, Guatemala, in fact over this last week at least 5 provinces of Guatemala has reported Chikungunya. Salvador has also reported. We haven't seen any reports out of Honduras. For Belize, we have no known cases."
And while there are no known cases, there was one positive test for Chik-V at a private facility in Belize City. But, this is not being registered as a positive test because the test used was not approved by CARPHA, the Caribbean Public Health Agency. The Ministry of Health says it tested the same person with a Carpha approved test - the test came back negative - so it is being treated as negative. The subject did test positive for Dengue.
And there's a lot of that going around - including hemorrhagic dengue. As we've reported, there's been a kind of an outbreak on the Southside, particularly in the Lake Independence area. Today, we found out that this year's high prevalence is far greater than last year's but still lower than 2009 to 2010.
Dr. Michael Pitts, Director of Health Services
"We have reported 705 cases of dengue, with about 187 cases of hemorrhagic dengue in the country. Most of the dengue cases that we are seeing are coming from the Belize District, Cayo District and Corozal District."
Kim Bautista - Chief of Operation, Vector Control MOH
"If you compare over the past couple years or if you compare it to last year for example, the accumulative number of cases is 5% less. The alarming figure is in terms of hemorrhagic dengue fever which we tend to see outbreaks every 2-3 years. The last recorded outbreak of dengue was in 2010; late 2009 through to 2010. Back then you had 293 dengue hemorrhagic cases in 2010. This year so far we've seen 109, so that was from 2010 to this point. So if you compare to last year for example, we only had 16. So you are looking at 85% increase over the past year. So that is the alarming figure in terms of the number of hemorrhagic cases and that is attributed to the various stereotypes circulating in the Americas during that 2-3 year period. So it's almost a cycle that you could time it; the next 2-3 years we expect to see an increase in specifically hemorrhagic cases."
The prevalence of dengue cases in Belize is believed to have peaked two weeks ago.
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