The good news is that, unlike Zika or Ebola, yellow fever can be controlled with an effective vaccine, which confers lifelong immunity within a month of administration.
Advertisement
Alarmed that an outbreak of yellow fever in southwest Africa could spread if not quickly contained, medical experts will convene this week to consider whether to declare an worldwide health emergency. Since then, 2,267 suspected infections have been reported and 293 people have died from the virus, according to WHO.
The disease is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is also responsible for spreading the Zika virus, dengue and chikungunya. “The continued rapid spread of the disease in the Angolan capital Luanda – where some 7 million people have already been vaccinated – underlines the importance of community engagement, surveillance and improving environmental sanitation”. Exported cases of the mosquito borne viral disease have affected other African countries and as far away as China.
The panel of eight independent experts, led by Nigerian Professor Oyewale Tomori, said that urban yellow fever poses “serious national and worldwide risks” but stopped short of declaring it a global emergency like the Zika virus or polio.
Cases have been imported to Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya, and the Angola outbreak has been proven to be the source of 11 infections in China.
The focus of yellow fever activity in Africa has shifted from West Africa, where targeted health initiatives and routine vaccination have dramatically dropped illness numbers, to central and East Africa.
There’s no specific treatment for yellow fever.
This follows the detention of several Chinese who recently arrived at Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay for failure to show proof of yellow fever vaccination. It also emphasized the need to ensure that travelers to and from countries at risk for yellow fever, especially migrant workers, receive vaccination against the virus.
In March, the World Health Organization said the emergency stockpile of the vaccine, which usually has 6 million doses, was exhausted.
The emergency panel today also recommended immediate application of the policy of one lifetime dose of yellow fever vaccine.
To help limit yellow fever’s spread, worldwide health regulations require that all travelers to the 34 countries where yellow fever is endemic present a vaccination certificate.
“Those urban settings are very well connected with the rest of the world”, said Briand of WHO.
In addition to the immediate consequences of the outbreak, there are broader concerns that it could spread well beyond the now affected countries. Senegal’s Pasteur Institute of Dakar, one of only four facilities in the world producing yellow fever vaccines, manufactures about 10 million doses per year, and the manufacturing process is extremely hard to scale up.
Advertisement
This article has been published with the permission of Project Syndicate – The Return of Yellow Fever.
