Emergency yellow fever vaccination campaigns have already reached more than 13 million people in Angola and more than 3 million in the DRC, he said.
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Many public health experts are anxiously watching the yellow fever outbreak and are concerned it could spread to countries that have never faced large scale outbreaks of this virus before and therefore have little natural immunity, Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center told ABC News.
Yellow fever is not highly contagious and is easily prevented with vaccines.
The outbreak originated in Angola, started and carried by mosquitos, back in 2015.
“There is a global shortage and yellow fever vaccines take quite a long time to produce and I think there are only five outlets in the world that manufacture the vaccine”, Heather Kerr, Save the Children.
Yellow Fever is making more victims and the authorities want to protect people from this virus. Together they produced fifty million to a hundred million doses per year. This means that more than 20% of people who have contracted yellow fever in the DRC have died. This is not enough to fight the outbreak in Africa and has let the virus spread to thousands. They are already a threat due to Zika Virus. It is possible that we will see more people infected in Europe, Asia or America too.
“There’s no known cure for yellow fever”, said Kerr. The bite of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes can infect a human and could be the cause of the cases reported in Angola and the DRC. If yellow fever symptoms progress, people suffer from jaundice, meaning that their skin, mucous membranes or eyes will turn yellow, because the virus affects the levels of bilirubin in the body.
A WHO Yellow Vaccination book.
The World Health Organization is giving people one-fifth of the standard dose to compensate the lack of vaccines for Angola and the DRC population.
There are now several companies that work to produce 50-100 million doses of the much-needed vaccine but this isn’t enough to cover the amount of people in Africa and the rate at which the infectious disease is spreading.
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Agricultural personnel who frequent forested areas, hunters, forest workers, hikers and campers are among the list of persons who are eligible for yellow fever booster doses. One of the largest yellow fever outbreaks in decades could soon spread globally, aid group Save the Children warned on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2016 as the World Health Organization is set to launch one of the largest emergency vaccination campaigns ever attempted in Africa.
