Abstract
Yellow fever (YF) virus still represents a major threat in low resource countries in both South America and Africa despite the presence of an effective vaccine. YF outbreaks are not only due to insufficient vaccine coverage for insufficient vaccine supply, but also to the increase in people without history of vaccination living in endemic areas. Globalization, continuous population growth, urbanization associated with inadequate public health infrastructure, and climate changes constitute important promoting factors for the spread of this virus to tropical and subtropical areas in mosquito-infested regions capable of spreading the disease. In the present review, we focus on the origin of the virus and its transmission, representing two debated topics throughout the nineteenth century, going deeply into the history of YF vaccines until the development of the vaccine still used nowadays. Besides surveillance, we highlight the urgent need of routine immunization and vaccination campaigns associated to diverse and innovative mosquito control technologies in endemic areas for YF virus in order to minimize the risk of new YF outbreaks and the global burden of YF in the future.
Highlights
Yellow fever (YF) is a mosquito-borne viral illness caused by an arbovirus of the familyFlaviviridae, genus Flavivirus, encompassing positive-single-stranded RNA viruses
YF outbreaks are due to insufficient vaccine coverage for insufficient vaccine supply, and to the increase in people without history of vaccination living in endemic areas
We highlight the urgent need of routine immunization and vaccination campaigns associated to diverse and innovative mosquito control technologies in endemic areas for YF virus in order to minimize the risk of new YF outbreaks and the global burden of YF in the future
Summary
Yellow fever (YF) is a mosquito-borne viral illness caused by an arbovirus of the family. Epidemiological and genetic studies sustain the hypothesis that the YF virus originated in Africa [7] and would be introduced in the 16th century by the trading of slaves from endemic African countries into countries of the Western region of America, causing outbreaks there between the 17th and 18th centuries [8]. The highly populated cities of the eastern coast of the United States (US) constituted a favorable condition for the spread of YF virus imported by ships from the Caribbean, with repeated epidemics in the US occurring in cities such as New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans in the 18th and 19th centuries, causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people in America [12]. As occurred in the Spanish–American War of 1898, YF was responsible for a higher number of deaths in the volunteer troops respect the war itself [13], whereas between 1904 and 1914, YF caused the delay in completing Panama Canal construction due to the thousands of deaths [14]
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