Your article contained a few errors. Chikungunya is a term derived not from Swahili but from Matonde which is a dilaect peculiar to some parts of Tanzania. The deaths of 248 people which occurred in the epidemic on Reunion island in France were not directly attributed to chikungunya. Only one case, in a newborn child, has been proven to be a death due to meningoencephalitis secondary to chikungunya infection. All the others sufered from serious other medical conditions which would have caused death due to any small stress. Therefore chikungunya is a disease with severe morbidity but is fatal only very rarely, and that too only if the patient has some serous underlying medical disorder. The deaths due to chikungunya in Andhra Pradesh and now being reported in Kerala have never been proven to be due to this disease. No confirmatory tests have been done in them. Note also that the epidemic in The South Indian Ocean affected more than 2,60,000 people and only 248 people died, and that too not directly due to the infection So please do not spread the message about chikungunya mortality Dr. Satish
