Yellow Fever

The Angolan National IHR Focal Point have detected and notified the WHO of yellow fever disease outbreak in the district of Viana in Luanda province. As of 8 Feb 2016(Monday), there were 164 reported cases as well as 37 deaths in this location. Yellow fever can get contracted through bites of infected Aedes species of mosquitoes. Mosquitoes get the virus by feeding on infected primates and then transmit it to other primates.

I decided to report on thins outbreak because it is quite shocking that lack of protection against mosquitoes, which many people assume can cause such immense outbreak as well as death in developing countries. Contracting manageable diseases like yellow fever because of lack of simple precautionary measure remains a passed story in first world countries, particularly America.

Infection with yellow fever viruses first occurred in Windward Islands of Caribbean on Barbados in the year 1647 and Guadalupe in the year 1648. The last decade experienced many outbreaks of the disease in Africa, Central Asia, the Caribbean and South America. In last year, it was estimated that 130,000 cases of yellow fever occurred and caused 44,000 deaths in the whole with 90% in Africa.

Yellow fever is a viral hemorrhagic disease transmitted by infected mosquitoes. Illness varies in severity from self-limited febrile sickness to serious liver disease characterized by bleeding. Approximately 50% of severely infected people without treatment die from this disease hence making its mortality rates high. This disease has no specific treatment. Its treatment remains symptomatic and aims at reducing symptoms for patient comfort.

When its virus gets contracted (incubation), one won't experience any symptoms. After this, the disease enters an acute phase with signs and symptoms such as fever, headache, muscle aches, particularly in your back and knees, sensitivity to light, nausea, vomiting or both, loss of appetite, dizziness, and red eyes, face or tongue. The signs usually improve and disappear within some days. Without heath care, the infection enters toxic phase with more-severe as well as life-threatening manifestations. These include Jaundice, Abdominal pain and sometimes vomiting blood, urination decrease, nose, mouth and eyes bleeding, bradycardia, failure of liver and kidney and dysfunction in the brain such as delirium, seizures as well as coma.

The salient reason to report on this disease is that it is simple in preventing it, and there are many ways of doing it through many actors such as Red Cross, W.H.O, and UNICEF among others. As a way of preventing yellow fever; safe as well as highly effective vaccine helps prevent this virus. Vulnerable areas also need detoxification of mosquitoes breeding zones. Using of mosquito nets while sleeping as well as the use of mosquitoes repellents in homes are some of the preventive measures. Even with this basic preventive measure, only a few people in Angola have been helped to implement them. More funds, as well as public health sensitization, need to be implemented to control this virus in Angola and many affected countries. Developed nations and the world health organization need to join hands in the provision of basic health necessities.

The solution to this disease seems simple to the fact that our developed nation take no keen interest in it. The greatest question to ask is that why yellow fever remains a monster to the world population? Why do health researchers go for sophisticated ways of controlling this disease when solutions are even known by the illiterate? Particularly, since there are other diseases spread by mosquitoes, why is it hard to prioritize yellow fever on health plans?

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at Melda Research in academic writing agencies if you need a similar paper you can place your order for a custom research paper from research paper company.

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