Chikungunya virus infection in travellers

Over the last decades, especially in the previous 10 years, the epidemiological importance of the chikungunya virus (CHIKV) has significantly increased. After 2014, epidemics in multiple countries in the Americas and with imported cases abroad, especially in Europe and North America, called attention to the relevance of arboviral diseases in travel and migration. Introduction and autochthonous transmission in the Caribbean, Colombia, Brazil and the rest of the countries of the region of Latin America was the consequence of travelers from endemic and epidemic areas arriving at places with suitable conditions for transmission. The last has been highlighted, especially in climate change and variability, global warming, travel, and migration, for Europe, where autochthonous transmission has also occurred during summer seasons in the south of the continent. In the current chapter, we reviewed the epidemiological and clinical aspects related to CHIKV, especially in the context of travel medicine, but also considered the importance of long-term consequences for the affected patients, such as the case of the potential development of chronic rheumatological and non-rheumatological sequelae.