Only Four Confirmed Cases of Chik-V in 2015

Marvin Manzanero

Doctor Manzanero also provided News Five with an update on the status of Chik-V in the country. Months after the tropical virus became prevalent in neighboring Central American countries, in late 2014 Chikungunya popped up in the community of Salvapan, in the outskirts of Belmopan when a resident who had travelled to El Salvador returned to Belize carrying the disease. But Doctor Manzanero asserts that the number of cases is small. Doctor Manzanero says that the decrease is due to community awareness.

Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services

“When you go to the facility, you get screened first for dengue; if you have dengue, then we don’t do further screening. We didn’t have….I believe in 2014 we only had seven; last year, we only confirmed four cases. Again, not saying that we don’t have more, but those were the ones that we could confirm. It doesn’t seem to be…the number aren’t that high like other countries are having, but we know we have Chikungunya yes, and I’m sure it’s just a question of when we detect that Zika case because it is probably already here. It’s an effort that needs to be a community-based effort. Even in some literature, people talk about success rates, success stories in dengue and vector-borne diseases. Eighty percent can be attributed to community efforts so it is a collective effort and I think the media can serve as an education tool to get the message across too. Plus even when somebody has dengue in the house, what I tell people is that you still need to use insect repellant even if you already have dengue because what that does is that no more mosquitoes are going to bite you to take it somewhere else.”