Brazil’s health ministry has ordered 11.5 million doses of yellow fever vaccine amid the largest outbreak of the disease in the country since 2000.<\/p>\n
Seventy cases – including 40 deaths – are confirmed, mostly in rural areas of the state of Minas Gerais. More than 300 cases are under investigation.<\/p>\n
Vaccinations are being recommended for people travelling to Minas and other areas with confirmed cases.<\/p>\n
Yellow fever is a potentially fatal disease transmitted by mosquitoes.<\/p>\n
Most of Brazil is considered at risk from yellow fever but the country has only seen a handful of cases in recent years.<\/p>\n
The governor of Minas Gerais has declared a 180-day state of emergency.<\/p>\n
There have also been three confirmed cases in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s most populous state, and one each in Espiritu Santo and Bahia, which both neighbour Minas.<\/p>\n
Around 5.5m vaccine doses have already been sent to five states that have confirmed cases or are at risk. The other 6 million ordered will arrive soon.<\/p>\n
It is not clear what has caused the rise in cases.<\/p>\n
Jimmy Whitworth, professor of international public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “It’s unusual.<\/p>\n
“The more cases you have, the more chance that it’s going to light up and take off in urban areas.”<\/p>\n
The Brazilian authorities are taking the situation very seriously and appear to have enough vaccine stocks, he added.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brazil’s health ministry has ordered 11.5 million doses of yellow fever vaccine amid the largest outbreak of the disease in the country since 2000. Seventy cases – including 40 deaths – are confirmed, mostly in rural areas of the state of Minas Gerais. More than 300 cases are under investigation. Vaccinations are being recommended for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[3413,3458,3459],"class_list":["post-288297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","tag-south-america","tag-vaccine-for-yellow-fever","tag-yellow-fever-vaccine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=288297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=288297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=288297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=288297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}