Pale and Yellow

Shortage of vaccines has pushed many African countries to the brink of a yellow fever epidemic

- Vaishnavi Rathore

SOME DISEASES miss global attention because of competing diseases and shrinking media space. Yellow fever is one of them. The disease, which is transmitted from infected monkeys by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, was overlooked because of the unilateral global focus on Zika virus, which is also caused by the same mosquito. By December 2016, Africa was on the brink of a severe epidemic, primarily because most countries ran out of the vaccine. What is worrying is that the disease, which was restricted to the African continent, has now spread to Asia—China, for the first time, reported 11 cases last year.

The disease has a long dark global history. It was a scourge in the 18th and 19th centuries in Africa and the Americas. Imported to the Americas through the slave trade from Africa, it killed thousands of people; one-tenth of the population of Philadelphia was wiped out in 1793. Today, the disease causes 200,000 infections and 30,000 deaths every year, with nearly 90 per cent of these occurring in Africa.

Victims of yellow fever suffer bouts of fever, headache, muscle pain and jaundice. In many cases, patients do not experience the initial symptoms, and enter the more toxic second phase when the liver and kidney are affected, resulting in jaundice. The infection results in the yellowing of the skin and eyes, which is why this disease has earned its name. About 50 per cent of patients who enter this toxic phase die within 10–14 days, according to the World Health Organization.

Dearth of vaccines