Eleven days after the news broke that an unknown disease killed eight people in the city of Maracay , Venezuela, doctors concluded that the deaths were caused by chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus. Meanwhile, Angel Sarmiento, the doctor who first announced the death, fled the country after being accused of terrorism by President Nicolás Maduro.
Although officials initially speculated that the deaths were caused by an unknown hemorrhagic fever, six of the eight original death tested positive for chikungunya when samples were analyzed in laboratories nongovernmental, said Julio Castro, the Minister of health of the municipality of Sucre and professor at the tropical medicine Institute at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV). "We do not believe that these deaths are due to unknown or rare," he said Science Insider, adding that "I have no doubt" that chikungunya is responsible.
After arriving at the end of last year the Caribbean, chikungunya was swept Americas. As of September 19, the Pan American Health Organization reported 729,178 confirmed cases suspects and 9537 in the region. There is no vaccine or cure for the disease, which is similar to dengue fever and causes joint pain. It is fatal in about 1,000 cases.
Maracay The cluster of nine deaths reported between August 30 and September 15, has raised questions about how many people are infected. Fatal cases are "the tip of the iceberg," said Castro. In a press conference on Monday, Castro and two other professional-Gustavo Villasmil Health, Minister of Health of the State of Miranda and Manuel Olivares, a doctor hospital-UCV estimated that between 65,000 and 117,000 people in Venezuela are infected with chikungunya. They reached this figure by using the standards of the World health Organization for the calculation of the spread of epidemics. But it is much higher than the official statements published by the federal Ministry of health of Venezuela, which recognizes only 398 cases of chikungunya and three deaths.
many infectious diseases, including malaria and dengue fever, are the up in Venezuela, where the public health system was paralyzed by a lack of funds and medicine (including antipyretic medications that can help treat the symptoms of chikungunya). comments Sarmiento on deaths in Maracay seem was the straw that broke the camel when he came to criticism of the record of the government's public health, Villasmil said. Now, facing lawsuits, Sarmiento fled to an unknown destination in Central America. Villasmil and Castro remain in Venezuela, but left their homes after participating in the press conference, as a precaution against reprisals.
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