Yellow fever epidemic confirmed in interior

Health authorities launched an emergency yellow fever immunisation drive in one of the most under developed regions of Senegal after officials confirmed the killer virus had claimed one life raising fears of more deaths to follow. The confirmation of a single case of yellow fever in Tambacounda last month, some 500 km east of the capital Dakar, is officially an epidemic according to World Health Organisaton (WHO) classifications. “A fatal case of yellow fever was confirmed on 30 September in the Tambacounda region and we launched a vaccination drive the following Tuesday to immunise all the population living in the surrounding health districts,” Pape Coumba Faye, the Director of Preventive Medicine at the Senegalese Health Ministry told IRIN on Tuesday. Symptoms of yellow fever, which is transmitted by mosquitoes and can spread rapidly in urban areas, range from something like a mild flu to haemorrhagic fever and death. Though the virus can be vaccinated against, there is no treatment for the disease once contracted and the fatality rate in unprotected populations can exceed 50 percent. Senegal lies within a band, spanning 15 degrees north to 10 degrees south of the equator, where yellow fever is endemic, according to WHO. However, there has not been a registered case of the disease, which produces a jaundiced appearance in its victims, since 2003 according to Faye. Earlier this month, nearby Burkina Faso confirmed four cases of yellow fever in the Batie, Gaoua and Banfora districts in the southeast of the country, near the border with Cote d’Ivoire. Then, WHO carried out mass vaccination campaigns either side of the border to prevent the spread of the disease to densely populated urban settings. At the end of August WHO confirmed 10 cases of yellow fever, including five deaths, in the densely forested region of Fouta Djalon, south-eastern Guinea. It was not immediately clear whether the epidemics are linked.