The term " chikungunya " means " that which writhes " in the local dialect of Tanzania, where it was identified and officially described for the first time in 1952. The name referred to the crouching posture that those affected take to try to limit joint pain very intense that the disease causes: the victims are bent by pain. However, it is likely that even some epidemics of the past, such as that of 1779 in Indonesia, are attributable precisely to the chikungunya.
Since then, the endemic basin of the disease has been located in different areas of Africa and Asia . In Africa, the virus causes cyclical epidemics, maintained thanks to a sylvan mosquito-primate cycle (such as cercopitechi and baboons). In Asia, where its introduction is more recent, the virus circulates in a substantially urban cycle involving Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes. Chikungunya outbreaks have been reported in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
In recent decades, the virus has also been found in Europe (Italy, France, Germany, Norway and Switzerland), in the Caribbean islands and in the Americas (French Guiana, Martinique, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Guadeloupe, Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, Panama, Chile and the United States) and in several countries and islands washed by the Indian Ocean (Malaysia, La Reunion, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mayotte, Seychelles and Comoros).
