Alarmed that an outbreak of yellow fever in southwest Africa could spread if not quickly contained, medical experts will convene this week to consider whether to declare an international health emergency. Though the panel convened by the World Health Organization may not make the declaration — a move taken with Ebola and Zika outbreaks — the session to be held in Geneva on Thursday speaks to the seriousness of the disease’s spread in Angola.
Yellow fever infections tied to Angola already have been reported in China. “In my view calling an emergency committee for yellow fever is clearly the right thing to do,” Lawrence Gostin, faculty director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, said in an email. READ MORE
