Government confirms yellow fever outbreak

The government of Burkina Faso said on Thursday that 25 suspected cases of yellow fever had been reported in the southeastern city of Bobo-Dioulasso and the nearby town of Gaoua, which is close to the border with Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana and four of them had been confirmed. A Ministry of Health official told IRIN by telephone from the Burkinabe capital Ouagadougou that 16 blood samples had been collected from the suspected victims of the mosquito-borne disease. Laboratory tests carried out by the Pasteur Institute in Dakar Senegal had so far confirmed four cases of yellow fever among them. However, the official, who asked not to be named, said there was no cause for alarm. “It is true that just one confirmed case of yellow fever strictly speaking constitutes an epidemic…but there are four confirmed cases and none of those people are dead,” he told IRIN. The official said all four confirmed cases were from Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso’s second largest city, which has a population of around 400,000. The World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed the yellow fever outbreak in Bobo-Dioulasso in a statement. However, officials from the vaccination section of WHO in Ouagadougou were not available for comment as they were all on mission investigating the outbreak. In it’s mildest form, yellow fever resembles a bout of influenza but in the most serious cases can lead to severe hepatitis, hemorrhagic fever and death. Up to 20% of all cases end in death, though mortality rates are much higher for children. Outbreaks of yellow fever can give rise to sudden and severe epidemics, especially in densely populated areas, where the mortality rate can be as high as 50%. Once contracted there is no treatment for the disease, though a safe and reliable vaccination has been available for decades. WHO has recommended that yellow fever be added to the list of child immunisation vaccines in countries where the disease is endemic. This, they say, would be more cost effective than reliance on emergency vaccination programmes. A study carried out in Nigeria by Cambridge University in Massachusetts, US, calculated that routine immunisation for yellow fever would cost US$ 0.65 per child, compared to US$ 7.84 per person under an emergency vaccination programme.