Chikungunya can be cured and prevented

Chikungunya is now a disease outbreak in many places in Thailand, and no anti-virus vaccine and medicine can cure this mentioned disease. The way to avoid the disease is to protect yourself from mosquitos bite.

Dr.Budsakorn Darawankul, Vejthani Hospital’s Rheumatology doctor, said that Chikungunya is a viral disease transmitted to humans by infected mosquitoes. The patient who received chikungunya virus will have high fever for 3 – 7 days with rash and severe joint pain. It usually causes arm and leg joint pain, muscle pain, and back pain. Some people might have severe pain and difficult to move, sit-up, or even walk, and some people might turn to be osteoarthritis eventually.

The severe of the disease in each patient is different, and some patients might have chronic joint pain and need to receive the treatment for two years continuously. Some patients’ symptoms might not be that serious, just take paracetamol or pain killer medicine to reduce the pain; the symptom could be better and can be cured within two weeks. However, the symptom of the disease in different ages is not the same. For example, the children aged under two years old who are infected the chikungunya virus may have a chance to have more severe complications, in contrast, the children aged over two years old and young people might have just fever, rash, and non-severe joint pain, and can be cured faster than the elderly and the people with congenital disease who are infected the disease.

Dr.Budsakorn mentioned that nowadays, chikungunya has no anti-virus vaccine or medicine that can prevent or kill the virus. The treatment is focused on relieving the symptom.

Chikungunya can be transmitted to humans by infected mosquitoes. If the mosquito bites someone who is infected for 4-5 days, which is the first period of the fever and then goes to bite others, these people will be infected too. Nowadays, there is no report that the disease can be transmitted from human to human. However, the people who have received the virus, their body will produce the immunity to prevent the disease, but there is no sure that they might be infected again.

Dr.Budsakorn recommended the best way to prevent the disease is to protect yourself from mosquitoes bite, including eliminating the mosquito breeding areas around residents in order to stop the outbreak.