HEALTH-AFRICA: Vaccinated under Fire

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Feb 11 1996 (IPS) - In an emergency health operation carried out while civil war raged, the World Health Organisation vaccinated almost one million people in Liberia to check an outbreak of yellow fever.

WHO reported here last weekend that since November almost 80 percent of the 1.3 million people targeted, including refugees – out of a total national population of 2.4 million – had been vaccinated.

Inoculation against yellow fever will continue until the exercise is completed end of February. After this date the Liberian Ministry of Health will take over the task.

The vaccination campaign took place under conditions made even worse by lack of communications and considerable security problems.

At the same time, WHO had to deal with an outbreak of cholera in the county of Grand Bassa, and the appearance of the haemorrhagic Ebola fever on the frontier with the Ivory Coast.

Between Nov 7 and Dec 15, 356 cases of yellow fever were localised and the death of nine patients was confirmmed, all in the neighbourhood of the port city of Buchanan in Grand Bassa county.

Since then around 20 cases were reported in rural areas, but with only one death. WHO notes that there is no specific treatment for yellow fever, which constitutes a serious danger to health in the whole of subtropical Africa.

The United Nations is particularly concerned with the abundance of mosquitoes, the carrier agent in many African cities.

The presence of these carriers, together with the increase in international travelling, can cause outbreaks of the disease, which is capable of rapidly reaching epidemic levels.

Once there is an outbreak, the most effective way of preventing its spread is by massive emergency vaccination, complemented in certain cases by efforts to check the growth of the mosquito population.

The Liberian campaign “was a great challenge owing to the complex emergency situation, which included defective communications and problems of security,” explained Dr. Fabrizio Bassani, director of the WHO Emergency and Humanitarian Action Division.

“In certain zones access had to be negotiated so that the vaccination teams could do their work,” added Bassani.

No cases of yellow fever were registered in Monravia, the Liberian capital. The population of the city has tripled because of the civil war. This in turn has only made living conditions worse, especially in terms of water supplies.

More than 600,000 citizens and refugees were vaccinated between Dec 21 and Jan 5. The local communities were mobilised to keep the city clean and stop the larvae in stagnant ponds and ditch water from developing into mosquitoes.