2016 Angola and DR Congo yellow fever outbreak
[10][11] On 30 May, Margaret Chan, director-general of WHO published a commentary on the bold action needed to prevent further spread of this important communicable disease that caused many historically significant epidemics that took many lives in previous centuries.
[13] On 12 August 2016, Daniel R. Lucey, a ProMED mail consultant, wrote an open letter to Dr. Chan requesting that the WHO emergency committee be reconvened to consider a PHEIC because of the continued spread of the disease in Democratic Republic of the Congo, the lack of sufficient vaccine, and concern that it may be spreading into the Republic of the Congo.
[15] By 2 September 2016, WHO announced there had been no new cases in either Angola or DR Congo in over a month due to a massive vaccination campaign.
Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, stated: "The current battle against yellow fever in Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo is coming to a close, ...
[25] On 22 March 2016, the WHO was notified of 21 deaths from yellow fever in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, some in a province that borders Angola.
[29] On 20 June, the health minister declared the outbreak of yellow fever in three provinces, including the capital of DR Congo, Kinshasa.
[33] On 28 March, a rapid response team was deployed into Uganda, where there was ongoing transmission unrelated to the Angola outbreak.
[41] ProMED-mail moderator Jack Woodall warned that "spread could make the Ebola and Zika epidemics look like picnics in the park!"
Mosquito-borne diseases can become endemic in a new geographic area when local mosquitoes become infected by feeding on an imported case.
[53][54] Other parts of the world where yellow fever is present but usually in the quiescent jungle cycle, and where there is regular air travel, such as Brazil, may also be vulnerable.
They stated: "Apocalyptic forecasts of the numbers of fatalities from Ebola turned out to be wildly wrong, and we can hope that will again be the case here, but given the way Zika has exploded in the Western hemisphere, we can't count on it.
[57] Starting on 26 April, ProMED-mail issued a series of posts on pre-planning information for countries at risk of importation of yellow fever, covering vaccination, mosquito control, quarantine and personal protection measures.
[62][63] Efforts to prevent international spread are confounded by the practice of selling falsified yellow fever vaccination certificates.
[64] The fake cards are sold to people who are required to have proof of vaccination after travel to areas where yellow fever is endemic.
[67] The WHO was supporting the Angolan government in immunization of 6.7 million people in Luanda province with the aim of vaccinating at least 80% of the population at risk of infection.
[77] On June 22, the WHO announced plans to launch a pre-emptive emergency vaccination campaign beginning in July in highly trafficked borders areas of Angola and DR Congo and in densely populated Kinshasa.
[78] On 20 July, the DR Congo government launched a campaign to deliver 1 million doses of yellow fever vaccine over 10 days.
[79] In August, the WHO with partners including Médecins sans Frontières, International Federation of the Red Cross and UNICEF launched another campaign to vaccinate more than 14 million people in Angola and DR Congo.
[85] In June 2016, a WHO representative in Luanda said that the initial investigation of the outbreak was thrown off course because the first cases in December 2015—the sick Eritrean visitors—had what were later identified as fake yellow fever vaccination certificates.
[86] It was more than a month before blood samples from the Eritreans reached the Pasteur Institute lab and yellow fever was recognized.
Public health experts identified that as one factor that delayed the response to the outbreak, which came close to being a much larger disaster, if vaccine supplies had not been successfully raised in time, or the disease had spread to other countries and continents.
