The WHO says the current deadly outbreak is particularly worrisome because, for the first time, it is occurring in densely populated urban areas where immunity is very low and the risk of it spreading is high.
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World Health Organization has said that, in addition to the emergency campaign, preventive vaccination campaigns are planned for the capital city of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and along the country’s border with Angola in order to build protection in high-risk populations.
That target represents huge logistical challenges, particularly given the concerns over vaccine stock levels.
The campaign, however, is affected by limited vaccine supplies, forcing groups to use one-fifth the standard dose, which will be effective for only a year.
Yellow fever is not highly contagious and is easily prevented with vaccines. The epidemic, which has killed over 300 people in Angola since last December, has now spread to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The WHO says an emergency committee will reconvene in the coming weeks to evaluate the situation and determine whether the yellow fever epidemic has been contained or constitutes a public health emergency of global concern. “The changing global situation in the past 20 years, including the rapid rise of urbanization, increased mobility between large cities in Africa, and new environmental and climatic factors mean an increased risk of mosquito-borne diseases spreading internationally”.
A wide effort to bring the outbreak under control by vaccinating more than 10 million people in DRC was due to start this week after delays due to shortages of vaccine and syringes.
“We’ve got to urgently reach as many children and families as we can with the supplies that are left, and this is the only way we are able to do that right now”, Kerr said in the statement.
WHO has developed guidance and materials that is being used to train thousands of health workers and volunteers before the campaign starts.
A campaign, supported by Save the Children, to vaccinate the Congolese capital of Kinshasa will begin on Wednesday, in a bid to stop the virus spreading through the city’s population of more than 10 million. Nearly 19m doses of vaccine have been administered since January, but the response was insufficient in curbing the spread of the disease. So no vaccines have really disappeared. “WE HAVE A MAJOR PROBLEM ON OUR HANDS”, wrote Unicef’s Robert Kezaala in an all-caps email to officials at World Health Organization and elsewhere. There are only seven million emergency vaccines available for this campaign – too few to even fully cover Kinshasa, let alone the whole of the DRC.
Ms Caminade sought to allay fears over supplies.
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A nurse at the General Reference Hospital in Kahemba, DRC, cradles a young child whose mother, with suspected yellow fever, died just hours after reaching the hospital from the Angolan border 100 kilometres away.
