A large per cent of Kerala’s population is immune to chikungunya virus now. However, there is a likelihood of a spike in infection in a few years in view of the mutation of the virus that causes it, a senior scientist with the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) said.
Addressing INFECON 2019, a continuing medical education programme on ‘Emerging infectious diseases with outbreak potential’, K. Regu, joint director, NCDC, Kozhikode, said here on Wednesday that new strains of the virus might come up in the near future. “It may strike after a few years,” he said, adding that those in the younger age groups now might not be immune to that attack then.
Dr. Regu also said that disease-spreading vectors such as mosquitoes, ticks, and flies were found to travel across continents now, affecting more people.
Shoukath Ali, consultant, NCDC, said the new diseases had emerged due to environmental destruction, encroachment of forests, and misuse of antibiotics. Despite high literacy, the people of Kerala were found to be following “anti-health” behaviour such as self-medication, he claimed. Dr. Ali pointed out that this could lead to a difficulty in managing communicable diseases. Claiming the the Nipah virus infection was of what he called as “low insectivity”, it did not have a history of spreading to many areas and could contain itself.
R. Sreenath, consultant, World Health Organisation (WHO), said the health body had listed a priority list of diseases for discovery of vaccines. The first category included Ebola, Nipah, Middle Eastern Respiratory Virus, and Zika and Crimean Congo virus in the second category. Research was on to discover vaccines for these diseases, he added.
The event was organised by the Department of Community Medicine, Government Medical College, Kozhikode.
