Health Minister Launches Vaccination Campaign to Combat Yellow Fever in Cameroon

The vaccination campaign is slated to begin on July 24 to end on July 30, targeting children and adults between the ages of 9 and 60 years, except pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers.

By Boris Esono Nwenfor

BUEA, Cameroon – The Minister of Public Health Dr Manaouda Malachie has announced a free vaccination campaign aimed at combating the yellow fever epidemic. Since 2023, yellow fever has caused several deaths in the country.

The government has taken several measures to prevent the spread of yellow fever, including vector control, surveillance at entry points and boosting herd immunity through mass single-dose vaccination.

The vaccination campaign announced by the public health boss is slated to begin on July 24 to end on July 30, targeting children and adults between the ages of 9 and 60 years, except pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and those with critical health conditions. The free yellow fever vaccination campaign will target people living in the Littoral region.

Classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a country at high risk of yellow fever, Cameroon has seen an increase in positive cases of this disease since 2021, with 45 confirmed cases in 2021, 41 in 2022 and 63 in 2023.

At the end of 2023, 26 health districts out of the 200 in the country were considered to be experiencing an epidemic, with 35 confirmed cases and 5 deaths, which represents a case fatality rate of 14.3%, according to the report released by the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI). 

Yellow fever is a viral haemorrhagic disease that kills at least 30,000 people each year, roughly 90% of them in Africa. Many infected people experience no symptoms, but for those that do, symptoms can include fever, muscle pain, headache and vomiting.

Some of these patients will then enter a second, more dangerous phase in which their fever returns and they start to bleed from areas including their mouth or stomach. Liver or kidney damage may also follow; the "yellow" in the name refers to the jaundice people often experience at this stage. Up to half of those who enter this second phase die within seven to ten days.

The yellow fever virus is endemic in tropical areas of Africa, and Central and South America, and is transmitted by mosquito bites; mostly those of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Other types of Aedes mosquitoes found in tropical and subtropical zones, as well as at higher latitudes during warmer months can also carry it – as can Haemagogus mosquitoes, which are found in Central and South America.

Large epidemics tend to occur when infected people arrive in urban areas with large numbers of mosquitoes and high population density, where residents have little or no immunity due to poor vaccination coverage.