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The Government has confirmed that dengue and a disease-causing virus called chikungunya are infecting a significant number of children at the Coast and in western Kenya.
Yesterday, a team from the Health ministry, Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri) and two American universities said it had confirmed the two viruses were responsible for a significant number of infections in the two regions.
bad week
"We have confirmed that dengue and chikungunya viruses are a cause of concern especially because they start like malaria hence tricky to identify," said Francis Mutuku of the Health ministry.
Mr Mutuku was presenting the team's preliminary findings on behalf of team leader Bryson Ndenga (Kemri) at a Pan African scientific meeting in Nairobi yesterday.
He said more samples had been sent to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, US, for confirmation.
"But yes, we have found that a significant number of children aged between two and 17 are infected with either one or both viruses and in some cases with malaria as well. Our next step is to determine the prevalence of the diseases," he said.
The news against what has been a bad week for Africa, after a Liberian exported Ebola to the US, Kinshasa was confirmed to have been the source of HIV, a resurgence of Marburg fever in Uganda, and Kenya was accused of transporting a virus called O'nyong-nyong to Europe.
Worried about the threat of new and re-emerging viruses, Pan African Mosquito Control Association with scientists from all over the continent are meeting for three days in Nairobi to seek new ways of eradicating especially the mosquito.
The Health ministry's head of disease control, William Maina, opened the conference on Sunday and challenged scientists to fight the new challenges.
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