Haiti offers treatment as virus outbreak surges

PORT-AU-PRINCE: Haitian health authorities will distribute pain medication to clinics around the country amid a surge in suspected cases of a mosquito-borne virus that is new to the region, a government official said Friday.

More than 5,500 suspected cases of the chikungunya virus have been reported in Haiti, up from 1,500 cases a week earlier, Public Health Minister Florence Guillaume said.

The outbreak has been spreading around the Caribbean since the first known locally transmitted case was reported in French St. Martin in December. There have been more than 55,000 suspected and confirmed cases in the region.

There is no vaccine for chikungunya and the primary treatment is pain medication for the high fever and arthritis-like ache in the joints that are symptoms of the illness.

Guillaume said in an interview on Radio Caribe that the government has 400,000 doses of acetaminophen to distribute and that any people who believe they have the virus can be treated at no cost. She urged anyone who has had a fever lasting more than 72 hours to seek medical attention.

The illness is rarely fatal though there have been deaths associated with chikungunya among people who are elderly or who have an underlying medical condition.

Hundreds of millions with tropical diseases lack treatment

PARIS: At least 1.4 billion people worldwide require treatment for a group of "neglected" tropical diseases and almost two-thirds are going without adequate medical care, eradication campaigners said on Wednesday.

Ailments including intestinal worms, elephantiasis and river blindness-lumped together as "neglected tropical diseases" (NTDs)-mostly affect poor people living in remote rural areas, slums or conflict zones.

A new report from the World Health Organisation, released in Paris on Wednesday and supported by billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, found that 700 million people received some form of treatment for NTDs in 2012.

But many did not complete a full course of drugs, while hundreds of millions received nothing at all.

"We still need diagnostics and we still need drugs," Gates said at the launch of the WHO progress report dubbed "Uniting to Combat NTDs".

The list of NTDs also includes Guinea worm, blinding trachoma, bilharzia, leprosy, Chagas disease and visceral leishmaniasis (black fever).

The diseases are carried by parasites and bacteria that tend to spread in dirty, cramped living conditions with polluted water and poor sanitation.

They "shackle more than a billion people of the world and most of them are women and children," said WHO chief Margaret Chan.

Many of the diseases are treatable and avoidable, yet they kill, impair and disable millions every year.

More than 800 million children live in areas where worms are "intensively transmitted" and are assumed to be infected. That has an impact on their nutrition, education and general health.

"Funding shortfalls and constrained human capacity in many endemic countries continue to limit the scale-up of drug delivery," the report said.

The report said progress was gradually being made, with the pharmaceutical industry donating nearly 1.35 billion doses of treatments last year.

The World Bank Group will commit $120 million (87 million euros) for NTD treatment in low-income African countries, it said in a statement, while a group of donors announced on Wednesday they would give a similar amount to combat intestinal worms in poor communities.