Yellow fever in the Democratic Republic of Congo – update

Écrit par WHO | 12 Décembre 2012

12 December 2012 - The Ministry of Health of the Republic of Congo is launching an emergency mass-vaccination campaign against yellow fever in Ewo District in Cuvette-Ouest region, beginning next week.

The emergency vaccination campaign aims to cover approximately 35,000 people in three health districts of Mbama, Ewo and Okoyo, all of which belong to the administrative district of Ewo.

The emergency vaccination campaign is being carried out after recent confirmation of a case with yellow fever virus infection that occurred in October 2012. The case was identified through the national surveillance programme for yellow fever.

Laboratory confirmation was done at Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale Kinshasa (INRB), and reconfirmed by a WHO regional reference laboratory for yellow fever, Institut Pasteur, Dakar, Senegal.

The vaccination campaign is being supported by the International Coordinating Group on Yellow Fever Vaccine Provision (YF-ICG1), the GAVI Alliance and the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Department (ECHO).
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1 The YF-ICG is a partnership that manages the stockpile of yellow fever vaccines for emergency response on the basis of a rotation fund. It is represented by United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and WHO, which also serves as the Secretariat. The stockpile was created by GAVI Alliance.