Ger­ard Best

Every­thing about chikun­gun­ya is painful. Even the virus's name comes from a Ki­makonde word de­scrib­ing the con­tor­tions of some­one suf­fer­ing se­vere joint ache. Fever, rash, cramps, headache, nau­sea and fa­tigue are just some of the symp­toms of the mos­qui­to-borne ill­ness.

Nor is track­ing the spread of the dis­ease across the Caribbean any eas­i­er. Eng­lish-lan­guage re­ports on the trans­mis­sion of the virus at the sub-re­gion­al lev­el are put out by pub­lic health au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing the Caribbean Re­gion­al Pub­lic Health Agency (Carpha), the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (Pa­ho) and the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol (CDC).

But keep­ing up with in­for­ma­tion from all of these sources can be time-con­sum­ing, es­pe­cial­ly if you just want to keep an eye on the spread of the dis­ease in your own coun­try, or get a sense of the broad­er re­gion­al pic­ture.

"It's easy to point a fin­ger and crit­i­cise but I thought it would be bet­ter to ac­tu­al­ly demon­strate that some­thing bet­ter could be done," said Vi­jay Datadin, founder and lead con­sul­tant at Guyana-based Caribbean GIS.

Datadin should know. He's made a ca­reer of ap­ply­ing ge­o­graph­ic in­for­ma­tion sys­tems (GIS) to the com­plex in­ter­re­la­tion­ships be­tween hu­man and nat­ur­al re­sources.

"When I looked at the out­puts of Carpha, Pa­ho and even the CDC, I thought they could be en­hanced. Specif­i­cal­ly, Pa­ho is putting out da­ta re­ports in PDF for­mat, which is re­al­ly less than ide­al. Where there are maps, they could be made more in­for­ma­tive and charts would help cit­i­zens un­der­stand the sit­u­a­tion more eas­i­ly. I felt it could be done bet­ter, be­cause they're still do­ing it in the old-fash­ioned way."

Datadin is co-lead on a new open da­ta project that aims to fix two ma­jor pain points as­so­ci­at­ed with the "old-fash­ioned way" of shar­ing pub­lic health da­ta.

First, as a one-stop re­source for of­fi­cial chikun­gun­ya num­bers, the on­line track­er seeks to cut out the has­sle of hav­ing to check mul­ti­ple Web sites, in or­der to get the lat­est col­lat­ed sta­tis­tics on the spread of the virus.

The sec­ond pain point is how chikun­gun­ya trans­mis­sion da­ta is pre­sent­ed by re­gion­al pub­lic health au­thor­i­ties. Cut­ting-edge web-based ser­vices like Boston Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal's HealthMap Web site and Out­breaks Near Me app ag­gre­gate news re­ports in re­al-time and push no­ti­fi­ca­tions to sub­scribers, fil­ter­ing by rel­e­vance based on ge­olo­ca­tion. They are built with re­spon­sive de­sign to dy­nam­i­cal­ly adapt to dif­fer­ent form fac­tors such as mo­bile de­vices, tablets and desk­top screen dis­plays. Plus they are mo­bile-op­ti­mised for light­weight brows­ing, and so­cial-friend­ly for max­i­mum user en­gage­ment.

By com­par­i­son, the re­gion's of­fi­cial pub­lic health Web sites are far less im­pres­sive. The CDC Web site pro­vides a sta­t­ic map show­ing coun­tries where lo­cal trans­mis­sion has been doc­u­ment­ed, and says that "chikun­gun­ya case counts are pub­licly re­leased every Wednes­day." Pa­ho pro­vides a week­ly re­port every Fri­day af­ter­noon of chikun­gun­ya counts for most coun­tries of the Amer­i­c­as and a sta­t­ic map show­ing coun­tries with lo­cal and im­port­ed cas­es. Carpha pro­vides a week­ly up­date of chikun­gun­ya counts every Mon­day. The Carpha site al­so has an in­ter­ac­tive map with a use­ful time­line fea­ture il­lus­trat­ing the pro­gres­sion of the dis­ease through the re­gion and mouse-over in­fo box­es show­ing the num­ber of cas­es in a coun­try.

The re­gion's pub­lic health ser­vices could learn from the open da­ta ap­proach­es that are be­com­ing the ex­pect­ed stan­dard for pro­vid­ing pub­lic in­for­ma­tion, Datadin said.

"Around the world, pub­lic or­gan­i­sa­tions are no longer sim­ply pub­lish­ing their da­ta in PDF for­mat or sta­t­ic maps but in open-da­ta for­mats and in­ter­ac­tive maps. The val­ue in do­ing it this way is that da­ta sci­en­tists, re­searchers and oth­er in­ter­est­ed par­ties are then able to not just see the da­ta but ac­tu­al­ly use it," Datadin said.

His lat­est project, a joint ini­tia­tive of Caribbean GIS and the T&T Guardian's new me­dia unit, brings to tra­di­tion­al pub­lic health re­port­ing the trans­paren­cy of open-da­ta for­mats and the in­ter­ac­tiv­i­ty of da­ta vi­su­al­i­sa­tion. The end-prod­uct is an on­line map-based chikun­gun­ya track­er that makes it easy for any­one with In­ter­net ac­cess to fol­low the re­gion­al dif­fu­sion of the dis­ease, us­ing pub­lic health da­ta ex­tract­ed from of­fi­cial sources. The track­er is on­line at www4.guardian.co.tt/map-chikun­gun­ya-caribbean.

Da­ta for the map and charts on this page were ex­tract­ed from PDF re­ports pub­lished by PA­HO, re­for­mat­ted and com­bined with a GIS base map. The im­proved chikun­gun­ya dataset is al­so made freely avail­able as a Fu­sion Ta­ble so that oth­er re­searchers, stu­dents and cit­i­zen sci­en­tists can view, fil­ter or merge with oth­er da­ta with just a brows­er, or down­load for fur­ther analy­sis.

On Datadin's Caribbean GIS Health site the map is ac­com­pa­nied by oth­er charts and time­lines that pro­vide his­tor­i­cal con­text and make each coun­try's de­mo­graph­ic sit­u­a­tion eas­i­er to grasp at a glance.

Top 12 ways to scare away mos­qui­toes

Pre­vi­ous­ly we looked at dif­fer­ent ways to deal with the chikun­gun­ya virus, from vac­cines to bush med­i­cines. But of course, the on­ly sure way to deal with chikun­gun­ya is not to get it. That means stop­ping those pesky mos­qui­toes from reach­ing you, to bite you and in­fect you. Here are some tips on how to do just that.

�2 En­cour­age the bats. A sin­gle bat can eat up to 1,200 in­sects every hour, and each bat usu­al­ly eats 6,000 to 8,000 in­sects each night. Now that's a lot of mos­qui­toes! Build­ing a bat house in the back yard can be your new hob­by (lots of in­struc­tions on­line)–and you'll al­so be help­ing the en­vi­ron­ment, as bats pol­li­nate many de­li­cious fruits.

�2 In­vest in a fan. The kind with wind speeds so high, it's like be­ing in a wind tun­nel which rip­ples the skin over your cheeks. (This ad­vice need not ap­ply if you have air-con­di­tion­ing, se­cure­ly clos­ing win­dows and/or in­sect screens.) Aim fan at bed; com­bine with light­weight but hole-free sheet. Cov­er up to­tal­ly, like a fu­ner­al shroud, with just a tiny fun­nel open­ing for your nose to breathe (purists may want to use a straw or oth­er breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus). Bet­ter yet, use two fans (an­gled well for max­i­mum blast).

�2 Light a cock­set (mos­qui­to coil). You will smell like nasty old socks in the morn­ing–and the smoke fumes can get over­pow­er­ing–but it kills mos­qui­toes. Ad­van­tages: Cheap, portable, ef­fec­tive. Dis­ad­van­tages: Some sci­en­tists say the ex­tra chem­i­cals they put in coils are bad for you, even car­cino­genic–like smok­ing 100 cig­a­rettes a night! So re­search your prod­uct.

�2 Make your own gar­lic spray. Mos­qui­toes hate the pun­gent smell. You can crush up a few cloves of gar­lic, boil it in wa­ter (or just soak for a few hours in the sun), and use the wa­ter to spray around the room. If you are ad­ven­tur­ous, you can even spray it on your­self, or make your own gar­lic per­fume. This will not on­ly keep mos­qui­toes and vam­pires away, it will al­so lim­it un­want­ed at­ten­tion from the op­po­site sex.

�2 Use neem oil. Mos­qui­toes hate the smell; and neem oil is nat­ur­al and will not make you sick. A study pub­lished in the Jour­nal of the Amer­i­can Mos­qui­to Con­trol As­so­ci­a­tion found that mix­ing neem oil with co­conut oil is a re­al­ly ef­fec­tive way to keep mos­qui­toes at bay. Neem is a po­tent an­tibac­te­r­i­al, an­ti-fun­gal, an­tivi­ral and an­ti-pro­to­zoal agent. Just mix neem oil and co­conut oil in equal por­tions, and rub it on all your ex­posed body parts. Said to re­pel mos­qui­toes for eight hours.

�2 Use oth­er nat­ur­al oils. Use these on your skin, or in a va­por­is­er: laven­der, mint, tea tree, or a 1:1 mix of eu­ca­lyp­tus and lemon oils. These all re­pel mos­qui­toes nat­u­ral­ly; and they are safer than Deet, for those wary of chem­i­cals or with al­ler­gic, sen­si­tive skin.

�2 Burn cit­ronel­la can­dles. They con­tain cit­ronel­la oil made from trop­i­cal lemon-scent­ed plants (Cym­bo­pogon, var­i­ous species) that are na­tive to Asia, where this oil has long been used as an in­sect re­pel­lent. The can­dles have been shown to re­duce mos­qui­to bites by up to 42 per cent while be­ing burned, ac­cord­ing to a study done by re­searcher Guy Sur­geon­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Guelph in On­tario.

�2 Plant tul­si, mint, marigold, lemon, neem, cat­nip, and cit­ronel­la grass. Plant them es­pe­cial­ly near win­dows. These plants are all ef­fec­tive in pre­vent­ing the breed­ing of mos­qui­toes. Tul­si plants are es­pe­cial­ly good for killing mos­qui­to lar­vae and keep­ing mos­qui­toes away–tul­si is rec­om­mend­ed by both an­cient Ayurvedic med­i­cine and the more mod­ern Par­a­sitol­ogy Re­search Jour­nal (study pub­lished April 25, 2008).

Bonus: you can use the tul­si leaves in teas and lots of home­o­path­ic reme­dies, too.

�2 Use cam­phor. Cam­phor is a waxy white sol­id found in the wood of the cam­phor lau­rel, a large ever­green tree from Asia (es­pe­cial­ly in Tai­wan, Suma­tra and Bor­neo). Cam­phor al­so oc­curs in oth­er plants like dried rose­mary leaves (up to 20 per cent cam­phor).

To­day, cam­phor can be syn­thet­i­cal­ly made from oil of tur­pen­tine. Vicks con­tains cam­phor, which, among oth­er prop­er­ties, works won­ders to re­pel in­sects. Some say cam­phor is the best nat­ur­al mos­qui­to re­pel­lent. Light cam­phor in a room and close all the doors and win­dows. Leave it this way for about 15-20 min­utes and go back to a mos­qui­to-free en­vi­ron­ment.

�2 Keep lit­tle fish in any per­ma­nent ponds or tubs. Do you have a per­ma­nent small out­door pond you like? Or even a tub of wa­ter out­side where you keep a pet tur­tle? Or a big tank you use to col­lect rain­wa­ter, be­cause you are fed up with Wasa? Then make sure these ponds, tubs or tanks are stocked with a few small fish­es. (Gup­pies or platies eat up any mos­qui­to lar­vae–but are pro­lif­ic breed­ers.)

�2 Pro­tect the good crit­ters. In your yards, nev­er use broad-spec­trum in­sec­ti­cides, which of­ten con­tain tox­ic pyrethrins. Pyrethrins kill off the good guys–the drag­on­flies, ants, ground bee­tles, spi­ders, wa­ter strid­ers, frogs and snails that all help to eat up too many mos­qui­toes. (Pyrethrins in in­sec­ti­cides can al­so make some peo­ple and pets sick.)

�2 Clear the yard. Once and for all, get rid of all those rusty hub­caps, old dust­bins, bro­ken soap-pow­der buck­ets, emp­ty beer and rum bot­tles, emp­ty fast-food box­es and old toi­let bowls lit­ter­ing your yard.

And clean out clogged gut­ters and drains. Any­thing that can fill with wa­ter can breed mos­qui­toes. This in­cludes any ob­jects that can hold as lit­tle as one ta­ble­spoon of wa­ter for sev­en to ten days–the time it takes for eggs to hatch and lar­vae to ma­ture.

–Com­piled by Shereen Ali

?

Vi­jay Datadin and da­ta jour­nal­ism

The joint project isn't Datadin's first for­ay in­to da­ta jour­nal­ism. In 2003, he found­ed Red Spi­der, a small web de­vel­op­ment start­up, which to­day main­tains the Guyana Crime Re­ports, an open da­ta track­er for sev­er­al cat­e­gories of se­ri­ous crime in Guyana.

The Web site is part news ag­gre­ga­tor, part crowd-sourced cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism plat­form.

In 2013, Guyana Crime Re­ports col­lab­o­rat­ed with the now-de­funct Bul­let Points, an ear­li­er open-da­ta jour­nal­ism project in­volv­ing the T&T Guardian's new me­dia desk, which tracked in­ten­tion­al homi­cide as well as deaths caused by shoot­ings in­volv­ing po­lice of­fi­cers.

Datadin, who was at the time work­ing on Guyana Crime, worked with Bul­let Points to de­vel­op a GIS-pow­ered map of 384 mur­ders in its 2013 dataset.

"I feel that the Caribbean is bet­ter off when its cit­i­zens are bet­ter in­formed," Datadin said.