The disease carried by mosquitoes has been found in Africa and Asia for many years, but appeared in Italy in 2007. People rarely die from it, but the muscle and joint pain can last for weeks or months. Transcript of radio broadcast: 11 April 2009
Correction attachedThis is the VOA Special English Development Report.
People get chikungunya fever when they are bitten by mosquitoes infected with the disease. For many years, the disease has been found in countries in Africa and Asia. The symptoms are increased body temperature, pain in muscles and joints and stomach sickness.
Hospital patients suffering from chikungunya in Ahmadabad, India, in 2006
The disease is not usually deadly. But the muscle and joint pain can last for weeks or months. There is no vaccine to prevent the disease and no special drug to treat it. Doctors advise taking medicines like aspirin or ibuprofen.
The name chikungunya means “that which bends up” in the Swahili language. People infected with the virus walk in a bent-over position because of the severe pain in the joints.
Malaysia reported more than one thousand one hundred cases of chikungunya so far this year. In Indonesia, about two hundred people in central Java became sick from the virus last month. And about one thousand people near Yeshwanthpur in India also showed signs of the disease in March.
But the disease also appeared in a cooler climate in two thousand seven, causing concern about its spread. Italy reported about two hundred cases during warm weather. The medical journal Eurosurveillance Weekly said it was the first time mosquitoes carried the virus inside Europe.
The Aedes aegypti mosquito can carry the chikungunya virus
Two kinds of mosquitoes carry chikungunya fever. One is called Aedes albopictus, or Asian tiger mosquito. It has been reported in many European countries including France, Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands. It also lives in the southern United States. The other mosquito that can carry chikungunya, Aedes aegypti, also is present in the United States.
Ann Powers is an expert on viruses. She works for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Fort Collins, Colorado. She said the disease spread is not directly connected to climate change. But she also said C.D.C. scientists are preparing for possible cases of chikungunya in the United States.
People around the world can prevent diseases spread by mosquitoes by removing standing water from their property. They should try to keep mosquitoes out of their homes. And they should wear clothing that covers the arms and legs when they are outside. DEET and other chemicals that work against insects can keep mosquitoes from biting.
And that’s the VOA Special English Development Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. I’m Steve Ember.
As the microfinance industry grows, there are efforts to prevent abuses. Transcript of radio broadcast: 23 December 2008
This is the VOA Special English Development Report. Microfinance is becoming a big business. It started as a way to provide very small loans to people in developing countries so they could begin to move themselves out of poverty. A few hundred dollars could mean a lot to a poor entrepreneur with a promising idea.
Mohammed Yunus
Bangladeshi economist Mohammed Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in two thousand six for his work with banking for the poor. He formed the Grameen Bank in nineteen eighty-three. Today there are microfinance providers all over the world. And anyone can be a microlender through a site like Kiva.org. You choose a project and provide at least twenty-five dollars of the amount requested. Three out of four loans have gone to women, which is common with microfinance. Kiva spokeswoman Fiona Ramsey says the site has grown even with the economic downturn. The total value of loans made through Kiva, she says, is nearing fifty-two million dollars. The downturn has not had a big effect on loan repayments either. The current repayment rate is ninety-seven percent. But Fiona Ramsey says that because of the credit crisis, microfinance organizations are finding it harder to get loans from banks. Kiva works with microfinance organizations in forty-two countries. These “field partners” keep the interest charged on the loans. The average term is twelve months. And the average interest rate is almost twenty-three percent. Returns like that help explain why microfinance now includes big banks and other lenders. Mohammed Yunus has said he worries that lenders may be more interested in profits than poverty reduction. He supports a new effort based in the United States called MicroFinance Transparency. The aim is to prevent abuses by letting borrowers compare pricing information from different lenders. Its creator, Chuck Waterfield, calls it “an industry-based truth-in-lending effort.” Borrowers, he says, are often misled about the true price of a loan. “For twenty years we set the price to cover the cost. Now, some organizations are setting the price to whatever they can get away with,” he says. The first step is to publish information collected from eight countries. Chuck Waterfield says information from Peru, Bosnia and Cambodia will appear in February at the Web site mftransparency.org. He says the others, including at least one country from Africa, will follow a few months later. And that’s the VOA Special English Development Report, written by Karen Leggett. I’m Jim Tedder.
