The following slides formed part of the presentation made by Dr. Rachael Irving at the Public Forum of the Pharmaceutical Society of Jamaica November 17, 2014 as part of National Pharmacy Week activities.
Dr. Rachael Irving has a PhD in Clinical Biochemistry. She is a Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus, Jamaica. She teaches and does research at the UWI.
“Many persons were returning to the USA with ChiK-V, almost all of the USA was affected (2006-2013). In 2013 mosquitoes in Florida started to spread the disease locally……. ChiK-V had become endemic in Caribbean before noticed. When ChiK-V was transmitted locally in Florida, we should have put in robust vector control measures, but because we delayed it became widespread in the Caribbean………Viral diseases such as Chik-V and Ebola are harder to treat than bacterial diseases and technology should be used to reduce cost…….Modern technology is available for determining fever randomly in travelers…”.