This morning in Nigeria’s capital city of Abuja, the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) is joining representatives of UNICEF and Gavi to launch the Eliminate Yellow Fever Epidemic (EYE) Strategy in Africa.
This strategy was birthed at the African health ministers’ meeting that was held in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe at the 67th Session of the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Committee. The ministers agreed on ten priority actions to guide countries on the elimination of the Yellow Fever (YF) epidemics by 2026.
The actions are contained in framework for implementing the Global Strategy to eliminate yellow fever epidemics that was presented to the delegates by Dr Zabuloni Yoti from the WHO emergency programme. He informed the delegates that “despite the availability of a vaccine with life-long immunity, the majority of countries in the African Region are at risk of Yellow fever.”
The Ministers have now committed to undertake WHO recommended risk assessments, catch-up campaigns and strictly implement the International Health Regulations (IHR) especially for travellers to and from high risk countries to tackle the disease. Other actions will be to vaccinate all people in high risk countries, improve routine immunization, vaccinate every eligible child as well as protect workers in high-risk industries such as oil, mining, construction and forestry.
The ministers have also pledged to prepare “readiness plans” that can facilitate quick response to an outbreak on yellow fever in urban centres. This will also entail sustaining vector surveillance and control programmes in cities and strengthening surveillance and early detection mechanisms.
In addition, the ministers undertook to establish a regional surveillance network that will bring all high-risk countries together in order to standardize case definitions and diagnostic procedures. The ministers have call upon WHO and other partners to work with the International Coordinating Group to ensure availability of a stockpile of yellow fever emergency supplies that can back-stop countries in cases of outbreaks. This will go hand-in-hand with fostering response system that facilitates rapid case detection, reactive vaccination, good case management, vector control and community mobilization.
With the above actions, people in 35 high-risk African countries will be protected against yellow fever and international spread of the disease will be prevented through prompt detection, confirmation and rapid containment of yellow fever outbreaks on the continent. As Dr Yoit pointed out, “with a single dose of YF vaccine per person, elimination of yellow fever epidemic is indeed a quick public health gain.”