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Sofia, a 66-year-old drink vendor, says she just recovered from a “kind of” rheumatic pain in her joints. She suffered high fevers at night and drastic chills in the morning, forcing her to stay in bed for two weeks.

“I had never heard of chikungunya until people said that’s what I was suffering from. It’s terrible,” Sofia told the Jakarta Globe in front of Bekasi Hospital in West Java.

She is now fully recuperated, though the cheap, over-the-counter flu drugs she used probably had little to do with her recovery.

Bekasi, located on the outskirts of Jakarta, has a long history of chikungunya, with the last serious outbreak taking place in 2002.

“It’s a typical suburban disease,” said Rita Kusriastuti, the Health Ministry’s director of vector-borne diseases. “The mosquitoes that transmit the virus like plants and farm areas, [as well as] puddles.”

She said that in the past few months, chikungunya had spread to many parts of the country, with Lampung and Bangka-Belitung provinces reporting the highest number of cases — primarily in suburban and semi-rural districts. Case also have been reported in parts of Java and Kalimantan.

According to state-run Antara news agency, the ministry reported that almost 20,000 people were infected with chikungunya from January to February in Lampung alone. That is more than the total number of dengue fever cases in the province in a typical year.

The ministry, Rita said, has been working to curb the transmission of the disease through public awareness campaigns.

“We ask people to keep their surroundings and water supply clean to prevent their backyards from becoming breeding grounds for mosquitoes,” she said.

She said fumigation campaigns also had been introduced to kill mosquitoes in areas suffering particularly bad outbreaks.

However, Rita said the rise in the number of cases over the first three months of the year pointed to the possibility of insecticide resistance among adult mosquitoes as a result of the frequent fumigation.

“We haven’t scientifically looked into the possibility. But, overall, the situation is still under control,” she said.

The name “chikungunya” is derived from a Swahili word that means “that which bends up,” apparently a reference to the stooped posture that develops due to the arthritis-like symptoms of the disease.

The first outbreak of the disease was observed in 1952 on the Makonde plateau, along the border between Tanzania and Mozambique. Indonesia’s first reported case was in 1973.

Upik Kesumawati Hadi, an entomologist from the Bogor Institute of Agriculture, said the rainy season was the perfect time for mosquitoes to reproduce because the rain provided many puddles and stagnant spots of water for them to breed. “In tropical countries like Indonesia, mosquitoes have a longer period to breed and infect human beings.”

Upik said some of the symptoms of chikungunya resembled those of the more serious and potentially fatal dengue fever. She said both diseases were transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, but were caused by different viruses.

“Both disease will cause sufferers to experience high fever, joint pain, nausea and vomiting,” she said.

However, she said, chikungunya sufferers did not experience the seizures and shock common to dengue fever patients.

Upik said that clinically, chikungunya was not considered a serious threat because it was a self-limiting disease that would resolve itself. She said the incubation period for chikungunya was relatively shorter compared to that for dengue fever.

“After a person is bitten, he will start showing symptoms within two to four days, while dengue symptoms take about eight days to appear,” she said.

She added that the length of the recovery period for chikungunya ranged from one week to one month, depending on an individual’s immune system.

However, she said, chikungunya could cause serious problems such as temporary paralysis, and there was no cure or vaccine to prevent or to kill the virus. The only treatment is to control the fever.

“It’s a problem because sufferers cannot go about their normal activities, which means not being able to work,” she said.

“The only effective preventive measure for the spread of chikungunya, as well as for dengue fever, is to break the vector’s cycle,” she said.

Upik said that contrary to popular belief, Aedes aegypti mosquitoes could bite humans at anytime of the day, although they preferred dusk and dawn.

“After they copulate, they often need to [feed], so an attack could happen anytime,” she said.