L’épidémie de chikungunya qui a atteint les pays de l’océan Indien et tout particulièrement l’Île de La Réunion en 2005-2006 a été d’une ampleur inégalée et riche d’enseignements dans bien des domaines : meilleure connaissance de la maladie, de ses formes émergentes graves, des vecteurs des arbovirus dont Aedes albopictus qui conquiert inexorablement la planète, notion de risque d’émergence des arboviroses en dehors des zones tropicales.

Chikungunya virus is an emerging alphavirus that has caused major epidemics in India and islands off the east coast of Africa since 2005, particularly in Réunion, a french territory. Lessons have been learned the hard way in the field of the severe emerging presentations of the disease and its vector the tiger mosquito that is expending worldwide. Importations into Europe including one that led to epidemic transmission in Italy during 2007, underscore the risk of endemic establishment elsewhere. Several research programmes are being conducted, boosting previously declining virology and medical entomology.