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Dr Sanphong Rittiraksa, a preventive medicine expert at the Songkhla Provincial Health Office, said yesterday that Narathiwat was the hardest hit with 7,000 patients, followed by Songkhla with 6,500 patients, but nobody was found dead.

The victims reportedly were rubber tappers.

The disease had spread since last November from Narathiwat to Yala and on to Pattani before raging into Songkhla even though health officials in every province tried constantly to contain the epidemic, Sanphong said.

Now the disease was widely epidemic in the border districts of Songkhla, including Sabayoi, Tepa, Natawee, Jana and Sadao.

The chikungunya virus is indigenous to tropical Africa and Asia, where it is transmitted to humans by the bite of infected mosquitoes, usually of the genus Aedes.

It causes an illness with symptoms similar to dengue fever.

It manifests itself with an acute febrile phase of the illness lasting only two to five days, followed by a prolonged arthralgic disease that affects the joints of the extremities.

The pain associated with a chikungunya virus infection of the joints persists for weeks or months.

"Chikungunya disease carriers are mosquitoes, which live in houses and rubber plantations, and 90 per cent of local residents in the deep South work on plantations that are good breeders for mosquitoes and good epidemic areas for the virus.

"As a result, chikungunya disease prevention is more difficult than dengue fever prevention, as dengue fever has only mosquitoes dwelling in houses as its vectors," he said.

"Initially, we've tried to block the disease from entering downtown Songkhla. If people's joints swell up and hurt and they have flu or a roseola on their skin, they probably have caught chikungunya so they should rush to see a doctor.

"Plantation hands should soak their clothes in a chemical solution when they work to protect them from being bitten by mosquitoes."