Yellow Fever deaths raise fears of epidemic

The United Nations has warned of a possible Yellow Fever epidemic in Liberia following at least three deaths from the mosquito-borne disease. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a joint statement on Tuesday that three people had died from confirmed cases of yellow fever, along with two more who were suspected to have caught the disease. The UN agencies said they planned to launch a mass vaccination campaign on Thursday in conjunction with the Ministry of Health and several medical NGOs. They said the aim was to reach 722,000 people who required "urgent vaccination." However, there were currently only 80,000 doses of yellow fever vaccine available within Liberia, they added. "WHO considers just one laboratory confirmed case to be an outbreak and we already have three confirmed cases with another 11 suspected cases undergoing laboratory analysis at the Pasteur Institute in Abidjan," said Dr Luzitu Simao, a WHO official in Liberia. "Conditions here are ripe for an epidemic," he warned. “The last 14 years of civil war have literally destroyed Liberia's health infrastructure and yellow fever is an extremely deadly disease. Even among hospitalised patients, the mortality rate may reach up to 50 percent," Simao said. Yellow Fever is a viral disease that can cause severe haemorrhaging. Patients bleed from the all the orifices, including the eyes and nose. The disease is endemic in rural areas, but health experts say the mass movement of people from the countryside to the towns to escape fighting has created ideal conditions for its transmission. There are currently about 500,000 displaced people in Liberia, most of whom live in crowded insanitary conditions in temporary shelters or the ruins of abandoned buildings in and around the capital Monrovia. Although Liberia lies in the yellow fever belt of West Africa, only six cases of the disease were reported between 1995 and 2001. UNICEF and WHO warned that as the rainy season approaches in April, mosquito numbers will multiply, making it easier for the disease to spread. The US $1.3 million immunisation campaign will initially target Bong and Nimba counties in central Liberia, which border Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire.