Health officials race to prevent Congo yellow fever disaster
By Tim Cocks DAKAR (Reuters) – It is the stuff of a disaster movie: an outbreak of yellow fever in Congo's capital city, full of unvaccinated people mostly huddled together in slums with too few drains and the kind of sticky, fetid climate that mosquitoes love. Kinshasa's 12 million people – twice as many as there are doses of yellow fever vaccine anywhere in the world – are largely unprotected against this sometimes deadly but easily preventable illness, which has killed at least 353 in Democratic Republic of Congo and neighbor Angola. With three weeks to go before they start a vaccination campaign for 11.6 million people against the hemorrhagic virus in three Congolese provinces, and only 1.3 million doses of the vaccine on their way to Congo, time is not on their side.