Health Experts in West Africa meet on Yellow Fever

Accra, Oct. 3, GNA- A Virologist, Professor Oyewale Tomori said on Wednesday Africa should develop her own vaccines to fight yellow fever, which he disclosed was resurging at an alarming rate. He said in Africa, only Senegal was developing its own vaccines whilst Nigeria was in the process of developing her own. Speaking at press conference during a five-day international meeting on yellow fever for Anglophone teams in Accra, Prof. Tomori who is also a yellow fever expert said Africa needed to be independent and not dependent to address its own problems.

He noted that despite the availability of safe and efficacious vaccines for the past 70 years, there was the 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".

He noted that the disease could not be eradicated but controlled and could be done if Africa attained and sustained at least 80 per cent yellow fever immunization coverage of children under five years of age and carry out surveillance based, targeted "catch up" and mass yellow fever immunization campaigns.

The meeting, attended by Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone aims at strengthening the capacity of the country teams involved in the control of the disease in the four countries with emphasis on epidemiological surveillance and to conduct mass vaccination campaigns. Participants are expected to be briefed on yellow fever infection in the African Region, World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended strategies for its control, be updated on planning and implementing high quality vaccination campaigns and sub regional programmes for addressing the threat of yellow fever epidemics over the next three years. The WHO Africa Regional Office, UNICEF, Institut Pasteur, Dakar and Centre for Disease Control are providing the technical inputs. WHO estimates that 200,000 cases with 30,000 deaths are recorded annually. In 2005 alone, 206,000 cases of yellow fever with over 50,000 deaths occurring in the sub-region and explaining that there was no treatment for the disease, which is deadly in 20 to 50 per cent of cases.

Prof. Tomori explained that yellow fever was transmitted through Sylvatic, which monkeys served as the host.

Outlining WHO and UNICEF strategies for the control, Prof. Tomori called for routine infant immunization of all children at nine months, mass preventive vaccination campaigns, which provides a minimum of 10 years protection, improved epidemic preparedness for rapid response to outbreaks among non-immune communities and strengthening case-based surveillance together with reliable laboratory confirmation of suspected cases for early detection. Dr. Fenella Avokey, Immunisation Advisor on Yellow Fever, WHO Africa Regional Office said WHO's Yellow Fever Initiative aimed at reducing the risk of outbreaks in the 12 high risk Africa countries including Ghana through vaccination.

She said the Global Vaccination Project Initiative (GAVI) provided 11 million doses of vaccines annually, whilst UNICEF supplied other on-site logistics including syringes, cold-chain and other commodities. "The International Coordinating Group sees to the management of vaccines stockpile for emergencies and preventive mass vaccination campaigns".

"WHO provides support to countries for risk analysis, surveillance of adverse events, vaccination campaign planning and implementation as well as training", she added.

Dr. Kwadwo Antwi-Agyei Programme Manager for Ghana's Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) said despite the lack of adequate logistics, the yellow fever campaign has been successful in Ghana. He explained that all the outbreaks in the three northern regions, which were most at risk and Upper Denkyira in the Central Region from 1931 to 2004 were well managed to avert the spread. He said yellow fever had been introduced into the EPI programme, and "coverage has been above 80 per cent since 2003". Prof. John Gyapong, Director of the Health Research Unit of the Ghana Health Service who presided said human resource would continue to be a challenge to the success of yellow fever control and called for government's support.