The cost of chikungunya, also called CHIKV, to Jamaica is now ravaging the island of Jamaica, shutting down court cases, crippling productivity and, in some regretful instances, taking lives from complications associated with the virus...With the prediction that some 60 per cent (1.6 million) of Jamaicans will be affected by CHIKV...estimating a loss to the Jamaican economy of at least $30 million

Kent GAMMON  Monday, October 20, 2014    

THE chikungunya virus, also called CHIKV, is now ravaging the island of Jamaica, shutting down court cases, crippling productivity and, in some regretful instances, taking lives from complications associated with the virus.

BAUGH... dealt with a polio outbreak scare back in 1983
 so effectively hardly anyone remembers it. At right:
 FERGUSON...kept his job in the face of bungling the
 country’s response to CHIKV

The minister of health, when the alarm bells were first rung by the Jamaica Labour Party's caretaker for Eastern St Thomas, said he was politicking and scaremongering on the part of the Opposition party.

The minister of health insisted some weeks ago that only 34 cases were confirmed for chikungunya when, in that very week, almost half of an entire high school in Eastern St Thomas had its student population sick with the symptoms of the chikungunya virus.

The Opposition put on a press conference to inform the nation how to deal with the chikungunya virus and that the virus was spreading at an alarming rate. The minister of health then reluctantly had to admit, after the evidence was overwhelming with Jamaicans down with CHIKV, in an address to the nation that the country was dealing with an epidemic of CHIKV. Worse yet, the minister of health reported that his ministry had been preparing for the onslaught of the chikungunya virus some two years before it reached Jamaica.

The effects of an epidemic on the economic health of a nation are catastrophic and the CHIKV epidemic is no different. With the prediction that some 60 per cent of Jamaicans will be affected by CHIKV, that is one million six hundred thousand Jamaicans, and with a downtime of five to 10 days, we are estimating a loss to the Jamaican economy of at least $30 million using a daily wage of $2,000.00 per day. This is a very conservative estimate and is certainly not the type of loss to the island's income that Jamaica can afford in the throes of an IMF economic straightjacket. more