Jonathan Kangu, 3, sits on his hospital bed in Kinshasa, Congo, in July showing symptoms of yellow fever. (Jerome Delay/Associated Press)
Health officials expect to vaccinate 14 million people over the next 10 days including some 8.5 million in the densely populated Congolese capital, Kinshasa, where the disease’s presence has sparked fears of a far wider spread.
There is no known cure for yellow fever and it could go global.
– Heather Kerr
Vaccinations started in Angola on Monday and about 41,000 health workers have been deployed across more than 8,000 sites with 17.3 million syringes available regionally, WHO said on Tuesday. There are about 6,000 suspected cases in the region.
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Save The Children, which is sending a rapid reaction unit to support vaccinations in Congo, warned the epidemic could soon spread to the Americas, Asia and Europe and other cities in Africa.
“There is no known cure for yellow fever and it could go global,” said Heather Kerr, Save the Children’s country director for Congo.
Yellow fever is not highly contagious and is easily prevented with vaccines. The mostly mosquito-spread virus was largely wiped out from the West following the development of two vaccines in the 1930s, but still sparks epidemics in Africa and Latin America.
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“The WHO Emergency Committee will reconvene in coming weeks [and] will re-evaluate the situation but we think that the outbreak is manageable if we can protect enough people with the vaccine,” he told reporters in Geneva.
The one-fifth dose, which will be used in Kinshasa, protects for at least 12 months but does not give lifelong immunity.
The virus is transmitted by the same species of mosquito that spreads Zika, dengue, and chikungunya. Once infected, people often fall ill with fever and muscle pain, but many recover after several days.