On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 11:46:31 +0100, "riverman"
wrote:

From
http://patients.uptodate.com/topic.a...=Travel+Advice
Yellow fever in expatriates and travelers to Africa and South America has
been rare since the introduction of routine vaccination after World War II.
Since that time, eleven recorded cases have been published, including two
fatal cases in 1996 in unvaccinated American and Swiss tourists who acquired
the infection in Brazil and died after returning home. An additional fatal
case was reported in an unvaccinated Californian who had traveled in the
rainforests of Venezuela with six others; five of these six companions had
been vaccinated against yellow fever. A tenth (fatal) case occurred in a
German tourist in 1999. An eleventh fatal case occurred in November 2001 in
an unvaccinated Begian tourist exposed to yellow fever in the Gambia. A
previously healthy Texan who traveled with a group to fish on the Rio Negro
in rural Brazil was also reported to have died with yellow fever on March
14, 2002; the patient had not been vaccinated against yellow fever. These
events emphasize the risk of exposure in the endemic zone, whe

a.. The virus may circulate silently between nonhuman primates and
mosquitoes
b.. Surveillance for human disease is minimal
c.. The indigenous population may be protected by vaccination.
--riverman
Google under "yellow fever tourist deaths"

Riverman,

thanks for the good find! We have at least some data now.

The numbers are extremely low, apparently not a single one was
reported from east Africa in that article. It would be
interesting to set them in relation to other tourist deaths.
(Actually nothing related to anything is still nothing, as far
as east Africa is concerned, so we cannot, for example,
calculate the cost of a saved life.)

Data on deaths and debilitating sickness from vaccination side
effects will be much more difficult to come by, because there is
a very strong interest from all sides (doctors, pharma
industry), not to let them be known.

Yet another factor is how well you protect yourself from
mosquito bites. The more conscientious you are, the less likely
you will get yellow fever.

And finally yellow fever usually comes in known outbreaks that
are published, at least in Kenya. If there is no such outbreak,
your risk is again lower.

I think that's all we can do here. Everybody who read this
thread has all information and even opinions from all sides and
can now make up his mind in an educated way.

Hans-Georg

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