Climate Change and Yellow Fever: The Preventive Health Concerns

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Everyday we read about huge outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases on the pages of newspapers. Yellow fever is one of the vector borne, vaccine preventable diseases that is endemic in Nigeria and has been a source of persistent outbreaks over the years, given that we have a very effective vaccine, available at no cost to patients in every public healthcare centres in Nigeria.

The latest and most recent outbreak this week was in some Local Government Areas of Katsina State, and it witnessed a lot of reported deaths. It’s not something new to us, yet it still catches many of us unaware.

In the last five years, Nigeria was faced with several outbreaks of Yellow fever, Lassa fever, Cerebrospinal Meningitis, Cholera, Ebola and Monkey pox. The outbreak of Yellow fever in Nigeria is reported to have occurred over thirty years ago. Although a multi-agency national Emergency Operations Centre is coordinating the national response with some sister agencies; but it is worthy of note, that the national and state primary healthcare development agencies have been pushing very hard to increase routine immunization coverage rates in the country.

A single shot of the vaccine protects for at least 10 years or a lifetime,

Yellow fever is a vaccine-preventable disease, and an endemic viral disease in tropical areas of Africa. It is also an acute viral hemorrhagic disease transmitted by infected mosquitoes usually the Aedes species which transmit the virus from person to person. The “yellow” in the name refers to the jaundice that affects some patients. Symptoms include fever, headache, jaundice, muscle pain, nausea, vomiting and fatigue.

It is important to ask if our changing climate is contributing to flare-ups of infectious diseases. Climate change presents a clear and present danger to human health. Climate plays an important role in the seasonal pattern or temporal distribution of diseases that are carried and transmitted through vectors because the vector animals often thrive in particular climate conditions.

Health impacts are already being demonstrated in Nigeria, climate variability and extreme weather events drive the increase in the frequency and intensity of mosquito-borne diseases. When it rains, it unleashes several years’ worth of mosquito offspring. Once the mosquitos have infested much in that area, it’s typically not long before a serious mosquito-borne disease outbreak will take place.

Under extreme climate changes particularly rainfall and temperature can also impact both mosquito life cycle and viral replication as well as some other factors such as deforestation, lack of immunization, accelerated urbanization, high mosquito density, low population immunity, and limited mosquito control resources which puts us at imminent risk for widespread and deadly yellow fever outbreaks.

What this tells us is that the need to increase awareness and advocacy on the prevalent of this disease and the role of climate change which is of crucial importance. Much can be done to prevent and mitigate the health impacts of climate change, with timely information on an impending outbreak which helps enable the implementation of control measures and risk communications.

Ideally, we should have an effective epidemiological surveillance system which should be well monitored such that outbreaks of diseases can be detected and controlled at the local government level before they snowball into a national emergency. State ministries of health should have their internally developed protocol for responding to these outbreaks with support from the federal government.

There are exciting times ahead in the fight against disease outbreaks and epidemics, especially at a time when donor nations are curtailing spending. Now is the time for the Nigerian government to fund early detection and prevention of epidemics. Preventing epidemics before they breakout saves the government money & improves the health of all Nigerians. We must stop the hawking and selling of fake Yellow Fever cards to passengers at international airports in the country. We must also start thinking ahead and increase funding at the community, local, state and national levels to shore up health systems and prevent the spread of outbreaks.

As Katsina State and many other states launch the mass injectable yellow fever vaccine programme, which is now active in and managed by the Primary Health Care Development Agency in hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, markets, motor parks and other places; there is need to also increase community to community sensitization & social mobilization, increase surveillance, strengthen routine immunizations services and entomological survey should be conducted.

We have all it takes. There is no excuse for being caught unprepared. Let’s all advocate for more support! Yellow fever could be near you. Get vaccinated today.

Yusuf Hassan Wada is a Public Health Advocate and writes from Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto. He can be reached at hasawa2011@gmail.com