The threaded discussions have demonstrated that communicable diseases are the leading causes of illness, deaths, and disability in the African continent. In this regard, the economic costs in terms of prevention, treatment, and loss of productivity are undeniably enormous. Most, if not all of the human and financial resources allocated to Africa have focused on disease-specific intervention programs, such as prevention or treatment of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.
Yellow fever, like malaria, is transmitted by mosquitoes and share similar symptoms. Although both diseases are preventable, there is a vaccine available for yellow fever. The yellow fever vaccine is expensive, and not readily available in poverty-stricken areas (Monath & Cetron, 2002). It is a concern for public health officials in Cote d’Ivoire when an outbreak occurred in January 2011 (Whittett, 2011).
Since yellow fever occurs only in some parts of Africa and tropical South America, Staples, Gerschman and Fischer (2010) of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have recommended that travelers to these areas get the vaccine. In African nations besieged by economic instability and political turmoil, the disease has brought untold hardship and indescribable misery to its citizens. It is sad to note that children below the age of fifteen are most often infected with the disease.
The United Nations Childen’s Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organization (WHO), and the World Bank have joined together to ensure that 33 African countries add the vaccine to its routine vaccination programs. These organizations have shown studies that the vaccine would be cost-effective (Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunizations, 2005). As pointed out, funding for the vaccine is a major problem and concern for these poverty-stricken economies. The WHO (2010) is launching an appeal to raise $30 million dollars to secure the vaccine stockpile for 2011 to 2015 for all 33 African countries.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) is an international financial organization that is completely funded by the world’s developed nations. The organization invests the world’s money for interventions against AIDS, TB and malaria. To date, it has committed US$ 21.7 billion in 150 countries to support large-scale prevention, treatment and care programs against the three diseases (The Global Fund, 2011).
In Southern Africa, the Global fund allocated $2.
...Organization summed it up best by stating “yellow fever is still considered to be a public health emergency of international concern,” (Yellow Fever WHO).
Health care policies are put into place regarding childhood immunization requirements for schools, along with information on obtaining religious exemptions. Each state and/or country develops their own individualized guidelines through interactions with federal and state government agencies. One in five babies around the world are missing out on basic vaccines and may die from weak health systems and insufficient funding. UNICEF and its partners are working to change these numbers and ensure that all children are successfully protected with vaccines.
Yellow fever is a horrible disease for those who begin to show symptoms, and while that number is low, of those who do become ill 50% die; only after having two rounds ...
The discovery of yellow fever would have not been possible if people had not put aside their misconceptions of where diseases originated. Diseases in olden time were believed to be divine punishment to people who had committed bad deeds, and therefore not much was done to try to find cures for diseases like yellow fever. As defined by the World Health Organization, yellow fever an acute viral hemorrhagic diseases transmitted by infected mosquitoes, and a common characteristic of this disease is the development of jaundice which gave it the name "yellow" fever. The mosquito responsible for the transmission of the disease is the female Aedes aegypti mosquito. Her transmission of the disease occurs as a result of it biting an infected host and inside her body the virus multiplies, and afterwards if the mosquito bites someone that person becomes infected.
According to World Health Organization, the statics show that: - The world needs 17 million more health workers, especially in Africa and South East Asia. - African Region bore the highest burden with almost two thirds of the global maternal deaths in 2015 - In Sub-Saharn Africa, 1 child in 12 dies before his or her 5th birthday - Teenage girls, sex workers and intravenous drug users are mong those left behind by the global HIV response - TB occurs with 9.6 million new cases in 2014 - In 2014, at least 1.7 billion people needed interventions against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) (“Global Health Observatory data”, n.d.) B. A quote of Miss Emmeline Stuart, published in the article in
Glasner, Joyce. “Yellow Fever.” Canada’s History 91.3 (2011): 46-47. Academic Search Premier. Web. 6 Mar. 2014.
Each day researchers are finding out about vaccines and are realizing that there are a lot more risks than benefits. Dr Phillip F. Incao explains: “Today, far more children suffer from allergies and other chronic immune system disorders than from life-threatening infectious disease. It is neither reasonable nor prudent to persist in presuming that the benefits of any vaccination outweigh its risk” (qtd in Spaker). While infectious diseases are becoming uncommon there is no need for any person to get vaccinated. There have been many issues surrounding vaccinations all around the world.
AIDS is slowly becoming the number one killer across the globe. Throughout numerous small countries, AIDS has destroyed lives, taken away mothers, and has left hopeless children as orphans. The problem remains that funding for the diseases’ medical research is limited to none. In the country Brazil, HIV/AIDS has been compared to the bubonic plague, one of the oldest yet, most deadly diseases to spread rapidly across Europe (Fiedler 524). Due to this issue, Brazil’s government has promised that everyone who has been diagnosed with either HIV or AIDS will receive free treatment; however, this treatment does not include help in purchasing HIV medications, that “carry astronomical price tags” (Fiedler 525). Generic drug companies have been able to produce effective HIV medications that are not as costly if compared to the prices given by the huge pharmaceutical companies. In contrast, the U.S. government has now intervened with these generic companies hindering them from making HIV medications, which may not be as efficient if made by the pharmaceutical companies. Not only are these drug companies losing thousands of dollars against generic drug companies, but also tremendous profit that is demanded for marketing these expensive drugs as well. “How many people must die without treatment until the companies are willing to lower their prices, or to surrender their patients so generic makers can enter market? (Fiedler 525).” With this question in mind, what ways can we eliminate the HIV/AIDS epidemic across the world? With research, education, testing, and funding we can prevent the spread of HIV to others and hopefully find a cure.
Rift Valley Fever was first reported around 1910, but was not identified until a Kenyan sheep farm was investigated after an epidemic in 1931.1, 2, 3, 5 The common name of the virus was derived from the area which it was identified, the Rift Valley of Kenya.1 A majority of the reported outbreaks of Rift Valley Fever have been contained to Sub-Saharan and Northern Africa.1, 3, 4 The most notable animal outbreak of Rift Valley Fever occurred in Kenya from 1950 to 1951.3, 4 This outbreak resulted in the death of approximately 100,000 sheep.3, 4 An outbreak in Egypt resulted in approximately 600 human deaths and a significant number of animal deaths in 1977.3, 4 In September of 2000, the first cases of Rift Valley Fever outside of Africa were confirmed in Saudi Arabia and later in Yemen.1, 2, 3, 4 Since the confirmation of the disease outside of Africa, Rift Valley Fever has been identified as a priority disease that has the potential to emerge geographically.2
...g humanities survival as a whole. Treatment centers for curable diseases in Africa only promote dependency on foreign aid, how will these countries ever develop medical technology of their own if there is no need for it? Higher survival rates in children due to vaccinations also means more children are likely to survive until adulthood, which means they will also have children who will be born into the same rural jobless society their parents came from. This cycle can never be broken unless change is sought from within the country, not from others attempting to push the process along with funds. The simple fact is no matter how many schools or hospitals are built somewhere, unless the is a drastic change in the ideology of the people, those resources will continue to be mismanaged and the demographic transition from developing, to developed will never occur.
The fever came to life in the summer of 1793 and became an epidemic. There were many Philadelphia and French doctors working on the cure to awful yellow fever. Moreover, the doctors, both treated fever patients and they were in Philadelphia. All these patients had been bitten by infected mosquitoes and people believed that the fever had come from foreign ships. Accordingly to our history there were somewhere from 2000 to 5000 people that had expired from the epidemic.
According to the World Health Organization, the reason why there are many Ebola outbreaks in West Africa is because they have “very weak health systems, lacking human and infrastructural resources, having only recently emerged from long periods of conflict and instability.” A hum...
The CDC works closely with public health agencies and private partners in order to improve and sustain immunization coverage and to monitor the safety of vaccines so that public ...
Preventing diseases is every countries’ responsibility, whether they are poor or rich. Poor countries lack the knowledge and the money to gain, and expand medical resources. Therefore, many people are not been able to be cured. For wealthy countries, diseases are mutating at incredible speeds. Patients are dying because drug companies do not have enough data to produce vaccines to cure patients. When developed countries help poor countries to cure their people, the developed countries could help underdeveloped countries. Since developed countries can provide greater medical resources to poor countries, people living in the poor countries could be cured. As for the developed countries, they can collect samples from the patients so that the drug companies can produce new vaccines for new diseases. When trying to cure diseases, developed countries and poor countries would have mu...
HIV does not only affect the well-being of individuals, it has large impacts on households, communities and even nations as a whole. Peer discussions and personal research has also made me realize that some of the countries suffering from this HIV epidemic also rather unfortunately suffer from other infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis, relative poverty and economic stagnation. Despite these setbacks, new inte...