Biosecurity

Why a yellow fever outbreak in Angola is a "potential threat for the entire world"

Yellow fever, a much-feared mosquito-borne virus, has sickened thousands of people and killed hundreds in Angola over the past five months.

A cluster of cases first appeared in Angola's capital, Luanda, in December, and the virus has now sickened people in 16 of the country’s 18 provinces. People infected in Angola have already taken the virus to China, Kenya, Mauritania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (where at least 21 people have died), a pattern that has the World Health Organization very worried.

"This outbreak," the agency said this week, "constitutes a potential threat for the entire world."

A leading researcher of mosquito-borne diseases, Duane Gubler at Duke-NUS Medical School, is gravely concerned about the outbreak too. "We're sitting on a time bomb waiting for it to blow," he said, "and we're really not doing anything about it."