The Yellow Fever Epidemic.

In the last unit in the disease class called World, we learned about how diseases can cause an epidemic. For this Action Project, we had to map and graph the path of an epidemic caused by a disease that we picked. I picked Yellow Fever, the reasoning for picking that disease is because I wanted to learn more about it. I have heard about it before but didn't know a lot of information. What I enjoyed most about this Action Project was finding information about my disease. What I found most challenging is graphing information on Gapminder. Overall I enjoyed doing this project, and I also really liked this term.

Yellow Fever. wwnc.cdc.gov. 2008.

Yellow Fever originated in Africa and was likely brought to America on ships during slave trade. The number of Yellow Fever cases has increased during that time because of the rising population cause dense living and not the right sanitation. The climate was also changing causing a rise of mosquitoes.

Yellow fever is caused by the Yellow Fever virus YFV, also called Flavivirus. The virus is transmitted by female mosquitoes, who pick it up from monkeys or humans, then delivers it to a new human when they bite and suck blood. The disease cannot be spread from person to person. Yellow fever epidemic of 1793 started during the summer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The disease was brought by refugees and mosquitoes on ships from Saint-Domingue. The disease rapidly spread to Prot City. About 5000 people died, ten percent of the population of 50,000.

Gapminder. Created by JV. 2015.

Above is a graph that shows a drought and epidemic deaths that occurred in the 1990's in Kenya. This epidemic that is shown may have been Yellow Fever. I picked Kenya because that was one part of Africa that was infected with Yellow fever. Two risk factors for this graph is drought, farms in that area lost crops because of low water continent. That will cause people not getting the right nutrition and weaking their immune system to fight off disease. That will cause an epidemic to spread because if you are weak and than get sick with an illness, you can fight it off. 

In 1853, the disease killed 7,849 residents of New Orleans. The press and the medical team did not alert citizens of the outbreak until the middle of July, after more than one thousand people had already died. The New Orleans business community feared that an epidemic would cause a quarantine to be placed on the city, and their trade would suffer. The steamboats carried passengers and the disease from New Orleans to other cities along the Mississippi River. Norfolk, Virginia 1855. A ship carrying passengers infected with the virus arrived in Hampton Roads in southeastern in June 1855. The disease spread quickly through the community, eventually killing over 3,000 people, mostly residents of Norfolk and Portsmouth.

The symptoms to Yellow Fever is affecting the kidney and liver causing high fever and jaundice. This disease is not curable, but is preventable with the Yellow Fever vaccine. The first vaccine was made in the 1930s and that controlled most of the outbreak. The vaccine coverage reach 60% to 80% of a population at risk.

The R0 for Yellow Fever is 4.1 so for every 1 person 4 people get infected. Vaccination is the only way to prevent the disease. If this disease would happen to break out again, I would say to quarantine people who may be infection because that would stop the spread of the disease. I would also recommend the vaccine because that brought down the infection rate.


Citations:

Gapminder. www.gapminder.org. N.P.N.D. Web 15 March, 2015. 

The importance of climate to global distribution of dengue and yellow fever.climate-services.org. Michael A Johnson. N.D. Web 15 March, 2015.

Yellow Fever.healthline.com. Colleen Story. 2012. Web. 15 March, 2015.

Yellow Fever Epidemic in New Orleans 1853.lafayettecemetery.org. N.P. N.D. 15 March, 2015.

History of Yellow Fever.historyofvaccines.org. N.P. N.D. 18 March, 2015.