13th Mar 2010
India: Government Says Chikungunya Virus Didn't Cause Deaths
Chikungunya Virus Didn't Cause Deaths in India, Government Says
By Simeon Bennett
March 19 (Bloomberg) -- Chikungunya, the debilitating disease that spread to Europe from Asia last year, didn't directly kill 1,790 people in India, a government official said, contradicting a study that reported unrecognized fatalities.
None of the 1.39 million people suspected to have been infected with chikungunya in India during 2006 died from the mosquito-borne illness, said Kalpana Baruarh, deputy director of the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme in New Delhi.
``No deaths directly attributable to chikungunya were reported,'' Baruarh said in an e-mailed response to questions today. Cardiac and respiratory arrest were common causes of death in those who died at the peak of the epidemic, he said.
Chikungunya infections in travelers from India caused the first recorded outbreaks of the disease in Singapore in January and Italy last June. There is no vaccine or specific treatment for the disease, which causes fever, rash and debilitating joint pain that can persist for months.
Researchers investigating an outbreak in Ahmedabad said 3,056 people probably died from chikungunya based on a comparison of the actual and expected death rate in the west Indian city of 3.8 million people. The study, published in this month's edition of Emerging Infectious Diseases, added to evidence of excess mortality during epidemics in Mauritius and the neighboring island of Reunion in 2005 and 2006.
A government-appointed committee formed to investigate 1,790 deaths in Ahmedabad between June and October 2006 found cardio-respiratory arrest, septicemia, respiratory complications, kidney and liver failure, inflammation of the brain and other diseases were to blame, Baruarh said. The finding was based on an audit of patient records at five hospitals, he said.
Diabetes, Hypertension
``No patient had chikungunya as the immediate cause of death,'' Baruarh said. The most common underlying conditions leading to death were diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, septicemia and pneumonia, he said.
Scientists had considered chikungunya incapable of killing people until an outbreak in 2005 on Reunion, a French territory about 800 kilometers (500 miles) east of Madagascar, when it was associated with at least 260 deaths in mostly elderly patients.
Chikungunya, which means bent down or to become contorted in the Makonde language of southeastern Tanzania, was first described by doctors in Africa in 1953 and regularly causes epidemics in 23 countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific.
A 69-year-old Hong Kong man was diagnosed with the virus, which he probably caught during a trip to Indonesia between Feb. 14 and March 3, Hong Kong's Centre for Health Protection said in a statement on its Web site yesterday. He's since recovered. It's the second case reported this year in Hong Kong in travelers bringing the virus into the city from infected areas.
To contact the reporter on this story: Simeon Bennett in Singapore at sbennett9@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: March 19, 2008 05:47 EDT
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