heidi
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 Posted: 02/28/06 - 08:06 Post subject: Mosquito-borne illness travels from Reunion to France |
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Besides having to worry about the bird flu outbreaks, France has another worry on its mind. It is called chikungunya and it is a mosquito-borne disease that has already took a couple of lives. The disease affected around 20% of the Reunion island and 30 tourists from the land who visited the island.
20% of the citizens stands for 15,700 people among which 77 have died. The problem is that this disease was not supposed to kill. Such outcome was not predicted or anticipated by scientific theories. The infection starts with fever and a rash and is extremely painful but curable.
Besides Reunion Island, outbreaks have been reported in Mauritius, Madagascar and Seychelles.
French government has sent 500 troops to help clean the island of mosquitoes and their Prime Minister is on the way to the island to show that tourism there is still safe but by taking certain precautions. Unfortunately, there is no vaccine developed yet to make the island’s visitors feel more secure, which means that the tourism on the Island will certainly drop until epidemic contained.
Other neighbor islands are being watched as well because of the danger of spreading of the disease. |
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