Dengue and Chikungunya in India

 Dengue and chikungunya epidemics have major challenging problems and have become

essentially of public health importance in India for the recent years, and it has been transmitted by

the Aedes genus (Aedes aegypti or Ae. Albopictus) vector mosquitoes [1,2,8,13]

. Chikungunya

epidemic was reported in 213 districts especially in South India during 2006 with lakhs of

suspected fever cases reported, 15,504 cases were screened for blood samples and 1985 cases

were clinically confirmed chikungunya [1], and the occurrences of epidemics were continued

across the country, since 2006, and it happened in India, after 25 years period of breaks. The

dengue epidemics were reported from 24 states / union territories of India with 37070 cases and

227 deaths during 2012 and it steadily increased to become very serious threat to the public [11]

.

Both dengue and chikungunya are transmitted by the Aedes genus (Aedes aegypti or Ae.

Albopictus) mosquito vectors [1,3,7,13]

. The environmental determinants have been creating

conducing environment and manmade factors were responsible for the occurrences of disease epidemics across the country

The chikungunya virus isolation and identification was carried

out at the 311 government sentinel surveillance hospitals and

14 public referral hospitals working in the 35 states and the

Union Territories of India [11]. GIS has been used for mapping

of disease prevalence and analyzing epidemic situation and

perhaps, assisting to controlling the epidemic situation at the

national level.