Yellow fever outbreak.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has sent emergency vaccines to Liberia to stop a yellow fever outbreak. So far the disease has claimed four lives and infected at least 80 people in the counties of Margibi, Nimba, Montserrado, Grand Bassa and Grand Cape Mount, Dr. Mamadou Kone, a member of a WHO medical team that fights epidemics in the region, told IRIN on Wednesday. Cases were initially reported in Grand Cape Mount, which borders Sierra Leone, but infections spread to the east and south. The last yellow fever epidemic in Liberia was in 1997 in Nimba County but few deaths were reported, Kone said. Like malaria, the mosquito-borne illness is more likely to break out during the rainy season. The WHO has appealed for more than US $400,000 to vaccinate those at immediate risk, according to the BBC.