WHO calls for yellow fever vaccination campaign

The World Health Organisation (WHO) called for an immediate yellow fever vaccination campaign in the Burkinabe city of Bobo Dioulasso on Wednesday, saying 89 suspected cases of the mosquito-borne disease had been recorded there so far this year and six of those people had died. Brehima Koumare, the head of the WHO support team for surveillance against epidemics in West Africa, said only four of the 89 suspected cases of yellow fever had so far been confirmed from the analysis of samples sent to the Pasteur Institute in Dakar, Senegal, but the situation was still worrying. The confirmed cases were detected during April and all the patients survived, he added. Koumare told IRIN there was "a real risk" of a major outbreak of yellow fever outbreak ocurring in Bobo Dioulasso, the second largest city in Burkina Faso, situated 360 km southwest of the capital Ouagadougou . He said WHO strongly supported a government appeal to donors for money to carry out the immediate vaccination of 740,000 people in and around the city. The vaccination campaign would cost 515 million CFA francs (nearly US$1 million), of which the Burkinabe government would contribute 36 percent, he added. Koumare said the risk of an epidemic was particularly serious in Bobo Dioulasso because yellow fever vaccination coverage in the city was reckoned to be low at about 60 percent. Recent vaccination campaigns had targetted children under the age of five and there had had been no major campaign to innoculated the adult population of Burkina Faso against yellow fever since 1984, he added. The WHO official also highlighted a large concentration of the mosquito species which carries yellow fever within Bobo Dioulasso and he warned that insect numbers would multiply rapidly with the onset of the rainy season this month. Koumare noted that 31 percent of all mosquitoes captured during four days of sampling in Bobo Dioulasso last month were of the type that carried yellow fever. "Adults are not vaccinated against yellow fever and the fact that some people have caught the disease means that it is there and in circulation," he warned. Bobo Dioulasso is an important market town involved in flourishing trade with nearby Cote d'Ivoire, Mali and Ghana. Koumare warned that people moving out to these countries could easily take the disease with them. A separate outbreak of yellow fever occurred in the town of Gaoua, 180 km southeast of Bobo Dioulasso near the Ghanaian border, last year. That led to four confirmed cases of the disease between September 2003 and February 2004. The Burkinabe government subsequently vaccinated 150,000 people in the area. Yellow fever is comes from a virus that is common in monkeys. It occurs in tropical areas of Africa and South America and is generally transmitted to humans by mosquitoes. In its mildest form, the diseases leads to an illness similar to influenza, but severe cases can lead to severe hepatitis, haemorragic fever and death. Children are most at risk from the disease, which can develop rapidly into major epidemics in urban areas with a mortality rate of up to 50 percent. WHO considers that even one confirmed case of yellow fever constitutes an epidemic.