World Health Organisation (WHO) advisers have recommended using a fifth of the standard dose of vaccine in the event of a global shortage – enough to immunise temporarily but not to give lifelong immunity.
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The epidemic, which has killed over 300 people in Angola since last December, has now spread to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
There is a preventative vaccine for yellow fever, but there is no treatment once the disease has been contracted.
There are only seven million doses of the vaccines stockpiled, according to Save The Children, and World Health Organization reports that the vaccine takes six months to produce.
Save the Children says that yellow fever has claimed almost five hundred lives, with thousands of suspected cases in Congo and Angola. A small proportion of patients develop severe symptoms, and almost half of these die within 10 days.
The WHO says it is planning on vaccinating more than 14 million people over 10 days in more than 8,000 locations, which would stop the epidemic from spreading.
The fear is that if the disease takes hold in Kinshasa, a densely packed city with over 10 million people, the infection will spread quickly and infected mosquitos could travel beyond the central African region.
Symptoms range from fever to jaundice to liver disease with bleeding.
“There is no known cure for yellow fever and it could go global”, said Heather Kerr, Save the Children’s country director for Congo.
While the fractional dose prohibits global travel, it protects people from yellow fever during the outbreak and contains the disease from spreading further.
Yellow fever is spread by mosquitoes, with rapid transmission in hot and humid environments.
But the charity has concerns that there are just seven million doses of Yellow Fever vaccine in global emergency stocks – not enough to cover the capital Kinshasa’s population of 10 million, let alone cope with an worldwide outbreak.
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 worldwide concern.
Citing the cases in China, Ms Kerr said: “It already has a history outside Africa”.
The campaign is expected to require 41,000 health workers and volunteers, more than 500 vehicles and 17.3 million syringes at more than 8,000 vaccination sites. So it is a massive effort, and we think that it is important that we try to protect as many people as possible before the rainy season starts as that would not only see an increase in the number of mosquitoes, but also make operations more challenging from the logistical point of view.
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Seven countries (Brazil, Chad, Colombia, Ghana, Guinea, Peru and Uganda) are now reporting yellow fever outbreaks or sporadic cases not linked to the Angolan outbreak.
