(Daily Graphic, Nov 23, 2011, Page 48)
HEALTH
authorities in the Northern Region have confirmed a new case of yellow fever
disease in parts of the region.
This follows laboratory findings that
attributed the death of a 16 year-old boy from Dikatami in the Sawla-Tuna-Kalba
district to a yellow fever infection.
Consequently, district and regional
health facilities in the region have been put on high alert to identify and
manage effectively any case of yellow fever.
Briefing the Daily Graphic, the Deputy Regional Director in Charge of Public
Health, Dr Jacob Mahama said on August 20, this year, the boy reported at a
clinic in the Sawla district of the Northern Region with complaints of fever,
chills, vomiting and abdominal pains.
He said after examinations, 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, clinician, doctor,
epidemiologists and health promotion officer, was dispatched to Sawla.
The team, he noted, undertook a search
for other cases, by reviewing the records in all the facilities.
He said the team found no other case,
but sensitised the health staff in the district and the community people on
yellow fever, its symptoms and causes.
Dr Mahama said the World Health
Organisation (WHO) had recommended that there should be a reactive vaccination
in various parts of the country to prevent the spread of the disease.
He said, in the Northern Region, the
vaccination would take place in six districts that have been considered as high
risk due to their proximity to Wa and Cote d’Ivoire, where there has been an
outbreak of yellow fever.
The districts are the Sawla-Tuna-Kalba,
Bole, Central Gonja, West Gonja, East Gonja and West Mamprusi.
“We would be vaccinating children who
are 10 years and above. We are not including those below, because the
assumption is that this group of children was already vaccinated as part of the
routine EPI,” Dr Mahama explained.
He said already the region had received the
vaccines and had distributed them to the districts, pending the commencement of
the vaccination exercise from 22nd to 28th November, 2011.
Yellow fever, as explained by Dr Mahama,
is an acute viral fever with symptoms that include fever, chills, vomiting and
jaundice.
It’s a disease prevalent in Tropical
Africa and South America, because the Aedes mosquito which transmits this virus
breeds in the tropics.
Twenty to thirty per cent of patients
who suffer from severe yellow fever lose their lives.
The best ways to avoid yellow fever is through
vaccination and by avoiding the bite of a mosquito.
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