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Africa: Africa Must Create Yellow Fever Vaccine
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BuaNews (Tshwane)
5 October 2007
Posted to the web 5 October 2007
Accra
Africa should develop its own vaccines to fight yellow fever, which is increasing at an alarming rate, said Virologist, Professor Oyewale Tomori.
Speaking at a five-day international meeting on yellow fever for Anglophone West Africa, Prof Tomori said Africa needed to be independent and not dependent to address its own problems.
In Africa only Senegal was developing its own vaccines, said the yellow fever expert, whilst Nigeria was in the process of developing its own. He said despite the availability of safe and efficacious vaccines for the past 70 years, there was a risk of large and uncontrollable yellow fever outbreaks in urban areas of West Africa. The resurgence, he said, was attributed to the loss of population immunity because of programmes, which were not sustained, and the gradual build-up of susceptible population.
"This emerging yellow fever threat can only be averted if African countries reactivate active yellow fever surveillance backed by efficient laboratory diagnosis, and institute yellow fever vaccination policies."
The disease could not be eradicated, he said but could be controlled and this could be done if Africa attained and sustained at least 80 percent yellow fever immunisation coverage of children under five years of age and carried out surveillance-based, targeted "catch up" and mass yellow fever immunisation campaigns. The meeting, ending here Friday, is being attended by participants from Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone. It aims to strengthen the monitoring of capacity teams in African countries to effectively conduct routine supplementary immunisation activities (SIAs) against the disease.
Participants attending the workshop will deliberate on issues including strategies for the control of yellow fever; effectiveness of preventive vaccination; planning and implementing high quality campaigns and presenting a sub-regional programme of priority for implementation over the next three years to address the threat of outbreaks.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) Africa Regional Office, UNICEF, the Institut Pasteur in Dakar and Centres for Disease Control (CDC) of the United States are providing the technical inputs to participants at the conference.
WHO estimates that 200 000 yellow fever cases with 30 000 deaths are recorded annually. In 2005, there were 206 000 cases of yellow fever with over 50 000 deaths occurred in the West Africa sub-region. There is no treatment for the disease, which is deadly in 20 to 50 percent of cases. Dr Fenella Avokey, the Immunisation Adviser for the Yellow Fever IVD Unit of the Inter-Country Support Team of WHO/AFRO, explained that countries at risk of yellow fever in the Africa Region had been facing a resurgence of the disease since the 1980's, as shown by the frequent outbreaks, especially in the West Africa sub-region.
Dr Avokey explained that the main objective of the investment was the vaccination of at least 48 million persons in 12 high-risk countries through response or preventive campaigns.
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Beneficiary countries including Benin, Burkina-Faso, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Senegal, Sierra-Leone, Nigeria and Togo, are expected to contribute to the cost of campaign operations.
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