New case of chikungunya fever detected near Holland Road

Hasnita Majid, Channel NewsAsia 31 Jul 08;

SINGAPORE: There has been a new local case of chikungunya fever. This time, the victim is a 60-year-old housewife who stays in Jalan Jelita, off Holland Road.

She developed symptoms on July 24 and saw a doctor the next day. Neither she nor her family members have travelled overseas recently.

Following the infection, her family members and foreign workers at nearby construction sites were screened. All tested negative for the virus.

As there was no evidence of further transmission, the Ministry of Health (MOH) will not be conducting mass screening at the vicinity at the moment, but will continue to monitor the situation closely.

Authorities advise anyone who has visited the area recently and who has developed fever and joint pains to consult their doctor.

This is one of 24 new cases of chikungunya infections reported in the past month. Twenty-three cases were imported between June and July.

As for the 23 imported cases, authorities said they came from various nearby countries with reported outbreaks, such as India, Indonesia and Malaysia.

With these, a total of 48 cases of chikungunya infections have been detected so far this year. Seventeen of these were local cases.

Apart from the latest case, 13 were from the Little India cluster in the early part of this year and two from the teachers housing estate cluster in Upper Thomson. Another one case was found at Farrer Road. - CNA/vm

Chikungunya case detected in Holland area
Alicia Wong, Today Online 1 Aug 08;

SIX weeks after the last case of locally transmitted chikungunya fever was detected, a 60-year-old housewife living in Jalan Jelita has become the 48th person here to come down with the infectious disease.

She is believed to be a case of local transmission as she and her family have not travelled recently.

While such cases are still in the minority — 17 this year — imported cases are on the rise. In the past six weeks, 23 imported cases of chikungunya were found, compared to the eight detected in the first half of the year.

The Health Ministry said there have been “chikungunya outbreaks in our region such as India, Indonesia and Malaysia”, advising Singaporeans to consult a doctor if they experience fever and joint pains after travel.

The housewife developed symptoms last Thursday and sought treatment the next day. Investigations show neither the housewife’s contacts nor nearby foreign construction workers have the virus. Over 83 premises have been inspected for mosquito breeding and three instances detected.

Chikungunya strikes in Holland Road area
Housewife is 17th person to be infected here and not overseas
Lee Hui Chieh, Straits Times 1 Aug 08;

CHIKUNGUNYA is back.

This time, it has hit a 60-year-old woman who lives in Jalan Jelita off Holland Road.

She is the 17th person to contract the mosquito- borne, dengue-like disease in Singapore, rather than having been bitten by an infected mosquito while overseas.

The housewife started running a fever and suffering joint pains and rash last Thursday. She went to a general practitioner the next day and recovered over the weekend.

Since neither she nor her family members had been overseas in the past month, health officers have concluded that she was probably bitten by an infected Aedes mosquito here.

The officers have since screened 39 people for the virus, beginning with her family and including the foreign workers in construction sites in her neighbourhood.

All tested negative.

Since the infection does not seem to have spread, the officers will not conduct mass screenings in the area for now, the Health Ministry said.

But it has advised those who have been in the area recently to see a doctor if they develop a fever, joint pains and rash.

Officers from the National Environment Agency (NEA) have also stepped up efforts to wipe out mosquitoes and their breeding sites in the area.

Sixteen officers have been deployed, 10 more than usual.

So far, they have checked 102 homes, sprayed insecticide in more than 80 of them and destroyed four mosquito breeding sites.

Before the first outbreak of chikungunya in Little India in January, the 13 people who had come down with the disease had been infected overseas.

The situation changed with the Little India outbreak, because the infected 13 living or working there had not left Singapore in the previous month.

Three more cases sprang up in June - a retiree and her maid living in Teachers' Estate off Upper Thomson Road, and an expatriate housewife in Farrer Road.

A further 31 people here were infected with chikungunya while overseas, bringing the total tally for this year to 48.

The Health Ministry noted yesterday that although the disease has cropped up locally, the majority of the cases remain imported.

It urges people to take precautions while overseas, especially in countries which have had outbreaks, including India, Indonesia and Malaysia.

To protect themselves, they should apply insect repellent, wear long-sleeved shirts and trousers, and use mosquito coils.

But while the number of chikungunya cases both local and imported is higher this year than in previous years, the rate at which people are coming down with dengue - a similar disease spread by the same mosquito and entrenched here - appears to be slowing.

Last week, 122 people were diagnosed with it, down from this year's highest weekly count of 175 in the first week of June.

In the first 30 weeks of this year, 3,427 people were hit by the disease, about a third fewer people than the 5,086 stricken in the same period last year.

Infectious disease in any land is danger to all
Salma Khalik, Straits Times 1 Aug 08;

DISEASES once confined to a few countries are now spreading easily across international borders through trade and travel.

In June, two Singaporeans were hospitalised for three weeks with brucellosis, a rare disease brought on, in their case, by drinking unpasturised camel's milk.

That time, fortunately, the disease was confined to them.

But Singapore may not be as lucky with the mosquito-borne illness chikungunya, which may be here to stay. A case has popped up every now and then, despite massive efforts to contain and wipe it out.

The most recent victim, the 48th this year, caught it here. This means mosquitoes here now carry the virus.

This underscores the mantra of the World Health Organisation (WHO) that infectious diseases are an international problem, since the potential for international spread is always there.

Dr David Heymann, WHO's assistant director-general of communicable diseases, stressed at an international conference on infectious diseases in Kuala Lumpur last month that vaccines and other benefits must be made available to the world's six billion people.

His point was that, so long as an infectious disease is active somewhere in the world, there is always the risk that it could spread.

Even the United States, with its First World abilities, has been unable stop the West Nile Virus from becoming endemic.

It is not known how the bug was spread to the US in 1999 but, since then, this mosquito-borne disease from Africa has become an annual summer problem in the US and Canada.

Polio had been on its way to extinction because the vaccine was made available to all countries. The number of children left paralysed by it fell from more than 1,000 cases a day 20 years ago to under 1,000 a year now.

But efforts suffered a major setback in 2003 when Nigeria, one of six countries that still had the disease, stopped vaccinating its children because it suspected that the West was using the vaccine as a weapon to sterilise its girls. Within two years, polio spread through international travel and trade from Nigeria to 18 countries that had previously wiped out the illness.

Nigeria, since convinced the vaccine is just that and not a covert weapon, has resumed its vaccination programme.

There is hope now that polio will follow smallpox, which was eradicated by 1980, into medical history.