World Health Organization launches campaign to curb yellow fever

World Today

Central Africa Yellow FeverResidents of the Kisenso district of Kinshasa, line up to receive yellow fever vaccines. Dozens of organizations have started a massive emergency vaccination campaign Wednesday Aug. 17, 2016, in Congo against the largest yellow fever outbreak in decades, trying to stop its global spread. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

The World Health Organization wants African countries to consider setting up the African Public Health Emergency Fund. This is an estimated 107 million dollar strategy aimed at tackling the public health emergencies in the continent.

Coletta Wanjohi reports from Addis Ababa, where the agency is meeting 47 African states.

The African Public Health Emergency Fund was approved by African members in 2013 but is yet to be implemented.

WHO is urging African countries to set up the fund as soon as possible.

The African continent wasn’t prepared to tackle the 2015 Ebola, which was how much it needs its own resources.

But several African states say that supporting this fund is not enough.

“So as we advocate for establishment of this fund it will be useful for countries to reflect and be able to build capacities within their own countries,” said Minister of Health Cleopa Mailu. “After all it is that capacity that WHO is supposed to deploy where it is strong , they call upon those countries to support other countries .”

With this fund in place the hope of WHO is that by 2018, at least 80 percent of the 47 countries will have implemented necessary emergency response policies.

One of the challenges remains that most African member states allocate insufficient resources to the health sector and rely heavily on unpredictable donor assistance during emergencies.


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For more on the growing concerns of the yellow fever epidemic, CCTV’s Susan Roberts speaks to Kathryn Jacobsen, professor of epidemiology at George Mason University.