AFRICA DECLARES WAR ON DISEASE
HEALTH EXPERTS ON CONTINENT BATTLE FRESH OUTBREAKS OF YELLOW FEVER AND POLIO. JUDITH DUFFY REPORTS
ACHILLING portrait of life and death in Africa emerged yesterday as officials revealed that of the 100 public health emergencies that occur on the continent each year, 18 are down to disasters, two are caused by starvation, but the rest – some 80 per cent – are due to infectious diseases which could easily be contained if there were sufficient resources.
The details emerged as health workers battle fresh outbreaks of deadly yellow fever and polio, both of which can be dealt with by vaccination, across the continent.
Health ministers from 47 countries in the region have gathered together at a World Health Organisation (WHO) meeting to consider a £75 million strategy to tackle the threat of outbreaks of deadly infections such as Ebola.
The five-day summit in Ethiopia, which will take place until Tuesday, comes at a time when one of the largest emergency vaccination campaigns ever attempted in Africa is under way in a bid to halt the worst outbreak of yellow fever for nearly 30 years – which it is feared could spread worldwide.
In Nigeria, attempts are being made to deliver polio vaccines to some of the most dangerous areas of the country, where there is a threat from Islamic extremists, after two toddlers were discovered to have been paralysed by the virus.
The outbreak is a major setback after the country had its last confirmed polio case two years ago and was on the verge of being certified polio-free, which would have also meant that the whole of Africa would be deemed free from the crippling disease.
The WHO meeting heard around 100 public health emergencies occur in the African region every year, with infectious diseases accounting for 80 per cent of incidents. Dis- asters account for 18 per cent, and acute severe malnutrition account for two per cent.
One of the most significant commitments to come out of the strategy meeting is that by 2018, at least 80 per cent of the 47 countries will have tested and funded plans to prepare for public health emergencies.
The meeting will also discuss management of the African Public Health Emergency Fund, which has funded the vaccination campaign to contain the current outbreaks of yellow fever.
Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa, said: “In our globalised world, diseases know no boundaries. We need stronger collaboration to protect our national, regional and global health security.”
At least 500 people have already died in the outbreak of yellow fever which is sweeping the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Angola, the most severe to hit the region for 30 years.
In response, a mass vaccination campaign was launched last week with the aim of reaching more than 14 million people in over 8,000 locations. But supplies of the vaccine are limited and the 18 million doses which have been sent to the continent are far short of the 40 million which some experts have predicted will be needed to contain the outbreak.
The WHO is using one-fifth of the standard yellow fever vaccine dose, which lasts about a year, in a bid to protect as many people as possible. This virus causes fever and muscle pain in victims, but many people recover after several days.
However, in the most severe cases it can cause bleeding from the ears, eyes and nose, organ failure and death. There is no cure.
Save the Children has sent a rapid reaction unit to support vaccinations in the DRC capital Kinshasa – an overcrowded city of more than 10 million people.
The charity warned there is a risk the yellow fever virus, which is transmitted by the same species of mosquito that spreads Zika, could soon reach other cities in Africa as well as the Americas, Asia and Europe.
Heather Kerr, Save the Children’s country director for Congo, said: “There is no known cure for yellow fever and it could go global.”
In Nigeria, the WHO said the wild polio virus had circulated undetected for years in the area where Boko Haram is operating. The Islamic extremist group has killed polio vaccinators in the past.
Just four years ago, Nigeria accounted for more than half of all polio cases worldwide, but a concerted effort to immunise more than 45 million children under the age of five led to the announcement that polio was no longer endemic in Nigeria last year.
However, the virus was discovered in two children, both under two, who were among refugees recently arrived from areas newly freed from Boko Haram in Borno state.
An emergency immunisation campaign is now being carried out to reach five million children in Borno and three surrounding states.
But massive challenges face health workers trying to carry out the programme in an area where the UN suspended aid after a military-escorted humanitarian convoy was attacked last month.
Borno state health commissioner Ibrahim Miringa said recent attacks by the
Islamic extremists prevented the emergency operation from getting health workers to two parts of Borno state where the children with polio were found.
“Not all the areas that have been liberated by the military could be accessed by our health officials because of recent attacks in Jere and Gwoza local government areas, carried out by Boko Haram,” he said.
The vaccination campaign is being sup- ported by charity Unicef, which said people arriving in refugee camps were coming from communities in areas which had not been reached for three years due to the control of Boko Haram.
Mohammed Ibrahim, Unicef programme officer for immunisation in Borno State, said: “Crowded conditions in camps make diseases spread faster, and this puts children at higher risk of polio infection.”
One of the children who has received the vaccine is six-month-old Ajeda. She has lived in a camp for displaced people outside Maiduguri city, northeast Nigeria for two months with her family.
Her mother Fatari said: “I gave birth when our village was occupied by Boko Haram. No vaccinators ever came to us.
“I am prepared to do anything to keep my children safe.”