Essay, Paragraph or Speech on “Dengue And Chikungunya” Complete Essay, Speech for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Dengue And Chikungunya (Deadly Mosquito Borne Diseases)

Dengue—Dengue is a viral infection that leads to fever and in some cases bleeding. When a person starts bleeding he is said to suffer from dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF). The infection is caused by four different but related strains of dengue virus. Hence a person can contact dengue more than once as infection by one strain of virus gives no immunity against infection from another strain. Dengue fever is spread by Aedes Egypti mosquito. The infection cannot spread from person to person. It is spread through the bite of an infected mosquito. The mosquito becomes infected when it bites a human being suffering from dengue. The mosquito can easily be identified by its peculiar white spotted body and legs. It is a highly domestic mosquito that breeds in clean water and has a flight range of only 100-200 meters. It mostly rests indoors though it is also found in any cool shaded places inside or outside the house. The female mosquito lays eggs in water containers around homes and other dwellings and the eggs develop into adults in about 10 days.

Prevalence of Dengue—World Health Organisation (WHO) states that over 100 countries are endemic for dengue, especially DHF.

According to estimates over 4 million infection with about 4000,000 cases of DHF are reported annually. According to WHO estimates for 2002, eight countries in South Asia, including India, Bangladesh, Bhutan. Myanmar and Nepal accounted for 9000 deaths from dengue. Globally only 1900 of the 67 million odd deaths were due to dengue. Clearly dengue is a relatively minor killer.

Symptoms of Dengue—Sudden onset of high fever is one of the first symptoms of dengue. The fever can be as high as 103-105 degree Fahrenheit. It is accompanied by severe headache (mostly in forehead) pain behind eyes, body aches and pain, rash on the skin, nausea and vomiting. The fever usually lasts for five to seven days. A patient needs not necessarily have all these symptoms. The first symptoms occur after 5-7 days after an infected bite. The symptoms that distinguish dengue from other fevers are pain behind the eyes, severe muscle and joint pain and skin rashes. It is the severe joint pain in dengue that gives it the name breakbone fever.

Treatment of Dengue-As with most viral infections there is no specific cure for dengue. Antibiotics are useless in curing this disease. Paracetamol can be taken to bring the fever down. In most cases, the patient can be treated at home.

The patient needs rest. Besides, lots of fluids in take is crucial because in case the fever progresses to become Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever (DHF) or even dengue shock Syndrome (DSS), loss of body fluid or blood is the most salient feature. Medicines like aspirin and brufin should be avoided as they could increase the risk of bleeding.

Killer Dengue—Dengue fever can damage blood vessels. This damage can lead to leaking of blood or plasma into organs or even complete breakage of blood vessels. As long as it is just dengue there is no risk of death but if it progresses to become DHF or DSS it can lead to death. But good quality treatment at the right time can save even patients from DHF or DSS i.e. (Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever or Dengue Shock Syndrome).

Usually the fever becomes DHF or DSS after 3-5 days. At this time, often the fever would have come down misleading people into believing that they are on their way to recovery. In fact, this is the most dangerous stage when the patient has to be alert to any symptom like severe abdomen pain, persistent vomiting, bleeding in the skin and appearing of small red or purplish spots and passage of black stools. The most dangerous DSS (Dengue Shock Syndrome) is that which is characterised by excessive thirst, pale and cold skin (due to low blood pressure) restlessness and a feeling of weakness.

It is possible that a person infect dengue more than once. Dengue can occurs due to four different related strains of dengue virus. If a person has suffered from one virus, there can be a repeat occurrence of the dengue if a different strain is involved subsequently.

Prevention of Dengue—Preventing the breeding of mosquito is the main strategy for dengue prevention. Community action is the key as all the people in a locality should be involved in keeping dry the place of any breeding site.

Since these mosquito breed in stored, exposed water so destroy containers in which water collects such as tyres, water coolers, flower pots etc. If collected water cannot be removed or drained use insecticides to prevent the mosquito larvae from developing into adults. Try as much as possible to avoid getting bitten by mosquitoes by wearing long sleeved clothes. Use mosquitoes nets or repellents.

Aedes Egypti Mosquito Agent of Dengue And Chikungunya

After biting an infected person and taking the virus from the infected person, the mosquito needs 7 to 8 days to start infecting others. This is called extrinsic incubation period of virus.

Once a virus enters the mosquito, the vector is capable of causing fresh infections throughout its life span.

The average life span of Aedes Egypti Mosquito is two weeks but some of them have been known to survive upto four weeks.

Once the virus enters the human body, it has an incubation period of about 3 to 10 days.

Aedes Egypti mosquito has generally been found to remain within a radius of 500 metres from its place of breeding. But with improved means of transportation cars and even aeroplanes have emerged as handy mosquito carriers.

Aedes Egypti Mosquito is known to be among the most dangerous of mosquitoes. It sucks blood as its food four times a day.

There is transovarion transmission of dengue virus in Aedes Egypti which means that if an egg is infected, the larvae will harbour the virus from birth. The female mosquito lays her eggs in water containers in and around the home. The larvae known as wigglers hatched from the mosquito eggs, and live in the water for about a week; they then change into a round shape after which the adult mosquito emerges and is ready to bite. The places where this mosquito is bred are barrels, drums, jars, pots, buckets, flower vases, plant saucers lanks, cisterns, tins, tyres and pans and some other places where rain is stored and collected. Chikungunya-Chikungunya is a viral disease transmitted to people through the bite of mosquito infected with the Chikungunya virus. The virus was first isolated from the blood of a febrile patient in Tanzania in 1953 and has since then occurred in Africa and parts of Asia. Symptoms of Chikungunya-Patients suffer from headache fever fatigue, nausea, vomiting, muscle pain, rashes and joint pains. Acute infection lasts for a few days to a couple of weeks, with joint pain and fatigue lasting for several weeks in some patients. Infection without fever is called silent Chikungunya and that does not require treatment. Spread of Chikungunya Virus-Like malaria, Chikungunya spreads through the bite of infected Aedes Egypti mosquito which are commonly found all over India.

Treatment of Chikungunya Virus-There is no vaccine or antiviral treatment for treatment of Chikungunya. Paracetamol and Ibuprofen are prescribed to relieve the patient of fever and aches. Aspirin should be avoided.

Prevention of Chikungunya-Since there is no vaccine or preventive drug, avoiding mosquito bite is the only solution. Always use mosquito net, wear long sleeved clothes and also use mosquito repellent. Keep the mesh screens on throughout the day and don’t let water stagnate. Once infected, the patient gets life long immunity.

Similarities between Dengue and Chikungunya-Both dengue and chikungunya are viral diseases the former is caused by flavi virus and later by toga virus.

In case of both diseases the vector is caused by Aedes Egypti mosquito. Aedes mosquito is a voracious mosquito. It sucks blood as its meal four times a day. Thus it can infect twenty eight people in a week.

Both diseases are associated with high fever, rashes, body ache and nausea.

Both give positive serological tests only after three to four days to infection. Both diseases cause reduction of platelets in the blood but the mortality rate of Chikungunya is far lower than Dengue. It is said that dengue kills but Chikungunya cripples.

Differences between the symptoms of Dengue and Chikungunya—In dengue there is fever with severe headache, muscle and joint pains and rashes. In dengue rashes are characteristically bright red and usually appear first on lower limbs and chest. But in some cases, these rashes spread to the most of the body. In case of Chikungunya the rashes are usually on limbs and trunk. There is a arthritis affecting multiple joints in case of Chikungunya. Besides there is headache, conjunctival infection and photophobia. In dengue fever lasts about 6-7 days, but in chikungunya fever lasts for two days, besides other symptoms which include intense headache, joint pain, insomnia and extreme degree of prostration lasting about 5-7 days.