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Yellow Fever vaccination begins in Northern Ghana

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Health authorities in the Northern Region are set to commence a vaccination exercise to curb the spread of the yellow fever disease in the region. The vaccination exercise is expected to take place in 43 districts country-wide.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recommended that there be reactive vaccination in various parts of the country following confirmation that five persons have been infected with yellow fever in some parts of the country.

In the Northern Region, the vaccination will be carried out in six districts that are considered high risk areas due to their proximity to Wa and Cote d’Ivoire, where there has been an outbreak of yellow fever.

The districts are Sawla-Tuna-Kalba, Bole, Central Gonja, West Gonja, East Gonja and West Mamprusi.

Briefing the Daily Graphic on the vaccination exercise, the Deputy Northern Regional Director in charge of Public Health, Dr Jacob Mahama, said the vaccines had been distributed to the districts, pending the commencement of the vaccination exercise, which is scheduled to end on November 28, 2011.

“We will be vaccinating persons who are 10 years and above. We are not including those below because the assumption is that this group has already been vaccinated as part of the routine EPI,” he explained.

Dr Mahama said on August 20, this year, a 16-year-old boy reported at a clinic in Sawla in the Sawla-Tuna-Kalba District with complaints of fever, chills, vomiting and abdominal pains.

He said after examination, he was referred to the Wa Hospital in the Upper West Region, where he died the next day.

“However, the blood sample of the patient was sent to Accra and later to Dakar, Senegal, in September this year where it was found to be positive for yellow fever,” he noted.

Dr Mahama said following the confirmation of the yellow fever case, a team from the regional health directorate, comprising disease control officers,a  clinician, a doctor, epidemiologists and a health promotion officer, was dispatched to Sawla.

The team, he noted, undertook a search for other cases by reviewing records in all the facilities.He said the team found no other case but sensitised the health staff in the district and the community to yellow fever, its symptoms and causes.

Yellow fever, as explained by Dr Mahama, is an acute viral fever with symptoms that include fever, chills, vomiting and jaundice.

It is a disease prevalent in tropical Africa and South America because the Aedes mosquito which transmits this virus breeds in the tropics.

Twenty to 30 per cent of patients who suffer from severe yellow fever lose their lives. The best ways to avoid yellow fever are through vaccination and by avoiding the bite of a mosquito.

Source: Daily Graphic

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