Kerala - Kochi   

‘Chikungunya has tripped Kerala healthcare model’

KOCHI: Chikungunya has tripped the Kerala healthcare model, which attracted international attention. This finding was emerged during deliberations at a national workshop on ‘Emerging fevers with the focus on chikungunya’ here on Friday.

Experts from various national research institutes talked about the lessons learnt from the two-year experience that had sent the public health system in disarray, with more than eight lakh people affected with viral fever across the State. But only 909 were confirmed as chikungunya.

Dr. Jagvir Singh, Joint Director, National Institute of Communicable Diseases, said that most of the fever cases were not being reported as chikungunya even though clinical diagnosis had shown the symptoms of the disease. Only the samples that tested positive at the Alappuzha Virology Institute were being taken as confirmed cases. However, if there was an outbreak of a disease with similar symptoms in an area, after the initial samplings, one need not depend upon laboratory tests to confirm them, said Dr. Singh.

Dr. Singh also pointed out that the chikungunya virus was probably missed out in 2005 because the field workers did not have a column in their writing format to indicate any other fever symptoms other than the known communicable diseases. When the fever was identified in 2006 in the coastal areas of Cherthala, the format for filing the communicable diseases was changed to include other symptoms and diseases.

Another lesson learnt was that the disease was easy to contain in a small area, as was the case in Olavanna, a small coastal village in Kozhikode district, where chikungunya was first reported. The fever was checked there thanks to an alert public health system. There were 17 cases reported from there in June 2006

But, when the fever became widespread in Cherthala, the place became known to be the most affected area. There were 716 cases by July 29, 2006. Dr. Singh said the data collected at the local level by field workers were not being processed to formulate any strategy to contain the health hazards.

An important tool that could have actually contained the fever outbreak to a large extent was the role of the community in containing the diseases.

The facts regarding diseases need to be communicated properly to the people and their involvement should be sought at the local level. Fogging alone could not control the vector population, he said.

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