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Deadly yellow fever outbreak may ensue, WHO warns on HWN YELLOW FEVER UPDATE

Against the background of a deadly yellow fever outbreak in Angola, Central Africa, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned travellers to the country to get vaccination against the disease and carry a valid certificate.

Oyewale Tomori, a professor of virology, confirmed that “over 100 million Nigerians are at risk of yellow fever, but that getting a million doses of yellow fever vaccines is going to be a tall order.” At least 258 people have been killed and there have been around 1, 975 suspected cases of the mosquitoborne disease since an epidemic erupted in December 2015.

It has already grown to become the worst outbreak in decades. Among countries that are vulnerable are Senegal, Benin, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso and South Sudan. Others are Burundi, Cameroon, Togo, Central African Republic, Uganda, Chad, Congo, Republic of Cote d’Ivoire and Democratic Republic of Congo.

Also vulnerable are Equatorial Guinea, Argentina, Ethiopia, Bolivia, Gabon, Brazil, Gambia, Colombia, Ghana, Ecuador, Guinea, French Guiana, among others. Yellow fever is transmitted by the same mosquitoes that spread the Zika and Dengue viruses, although it is a far more serious disease with death rates as high as 75 per cent in severe cases requiring admission in hospital.

Angola’s outbreak has already spread to other countries in Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and at least 11 cases of yellow fever have been imported into China in people traveling from Angola.

Cases of yellow fever linked to this outbreak have been detected in other countries of Africa and Asia,” WHO Director-General, Margaret Chan, said in a statement.

Explaining why getting vaccinated against yellow fever is necessary for those going to Angola; Tomori said a lot of people working in Angola, including Chinese, Kenyans and others, return to their own countries with yellow fever.

However, their various countries are able to diagnose it early enough and put them in isolation wards.

Imagine if any Nigeria goes to Kenya without getting the vaccination and brings back the disease, before we know what is happening, the person would have spread the disease condition to others that are not vaccinated.

According to him, some African countries, including Ghana and Togo have done a mass yellow fever vaccination.

Nigeria is the only country in Africa that has not done a mass vaccination against yellow fever. “What has been done in Nigeria is to concentrate yellow fever vaccination in areas where the authority believes that people are more vulnerable, including areas where there has been disease outbreaks and those communities that are close to countries that have recorded yellow fever outbreaks. “So, we have mapped Nigeria out into degrees of vulnerability and then we go there with the little amount of vaccinations that we have and vaccinated people in those places.

: 2016-04-29 12:12:39 | : 1455