Haiti: Chikungunya has been merciless

Posted on July 10, 2014 • Filed under: Haiti, Latin America Health, TRAVEL

npr.org reported this latest scourge in Haiti is chikungunya. It’s a rarely fatal but intensely painful mosquito-borne virus that has spread rapidly through the Caribbean and parts of Latin America after local transmission first started in tiny French St. Martin late last year, likely brought in by an infected air traveler.

Haiti is proving to be particularly vulnerable because so many people live like Saint Lise and her neighbors, packed together in rickety housing with dismal sanitation and surrounded by ideal breeding grounds for the mosquitoes that carry the illness.

“Chikungunya has been merciless in Haiti. Lack of basic infrastructure, poor mosquito control measures, and deep social and economic disparities hampered prevention and treatment efforts,” says a new report on Haiti’s epidemic by the Igarape Institute, a Brazil-based think tank. Read Article

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