Chikungunya is on everybody’s radar these days as cases increase significantly worldwide, including across Asia.
“That which bends up” is what the virus’s name means in Kimakonde (also known as Makonde), a Bantu language of the Makonde ethnic group from southeast Tanzania and northern Mozambique, deriving from the verb kungunyala “to assume a contorted position”.
The moniker makes reference to one of the hallmark symptoms of the disease: along with abrupt onset of high fever, headache, nausea, fatigue and skin rash, there is the characteristic prolonged debilitating joint pain, lasting months or even years – which leads to infected persons’ contorted posture.
The name chikungunya has an origin in an African language because this mosquito-borne virus is traditionally maintained in a complex African zoonotic cycle, and was first described during a febrile illness outbreak in the province of Makonde in southern Tanzania in 1952.
Its existence actually dates further back. However, because symptomatically, chikungunya fever can be difficult to differentiate from dengue fever, the disease was previously considered and known as dengue, another febrile epidemic disease of the tropics.