Chikungunya fever rampant in Sri Lanka's north

The Sri Lankan government has confirmed that the viral fever spreading rapidly amongst people in Jaffna, is the mosquito-borne Chikungunya fever.

It is suspected that more than 5,000 people are thought to have been infected with the virus which has now reached epidemic levels.

Sri Lankan Health authorities have called on the public to clean up areas where mosquitoes breed in an effort to prevent the spread of the disease.

The symptoms of the disease, a high fever, joint and muscular pain, severe headaches, body aches and a rash are similar to that caused by dengue fever, another mosquito borne illness.

The disease has now spread rapidly in Kalmunai, Mannar, Batticaloa, Puttalam and parts of Colombo.

The closure of the main highway to the northern peninsula because of heavy fighting in August, has resulted in a shortage of food and medical supplies in the north and Dr. Nihal Abeysinghe, director of the state Epidemiology Department, said pockets of the fever had now also been detected in Sri Lanka's northwest, south and east.

The outbreak has coincided with an outbreak of dengue fever cases as monsoon rains create breeding conditions for mosquitoes which carry the diseases, and health workers are struggling to cope.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says while the disease is painful, no deaths from Chikungunya have been documented in scientific literature.

The CDC says Chikungunya, Swahili for "that which bends up", was first isolated in the blood of a febrile patient in Tanzania in 1953.