Bolivian health authorities recorded a case of yellow fever on the border with Brazil.
This happens 19 years after the last documented contagion in the country and amid a dengue fever epidemic, reported the director of the Departmental Health Service (Sedes) of the department of Santa Cruz (east), Carlos Hurtado.
“The epidemiological surveillance system has detected an autochthonous patient positive for yellow fever.”
“We haven’t had a case of yellow fever for 19 years,” he explained at a press conference.
Bolivia is facing an epidemic of dengue fever, transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which also transmits yellow fever, with more than 16,730 positive cases and 48 deaths since January.
The patient is a 17-year-old young man doing his military service in a Bolivian Army regiment located in the municipality of Puertos Suarez, on the border with Brazil.
“Due to complications, he was transferred to the capital of Santa Cruz; he was suffering from hepatic and renal alterations, and due to the complexity of the patient, he is intubated and has a reserved prognosis,” he said.
An epidemiology team from Santa Cruz will move to the border with Brazil to execute a containment plan.
“We ask the population to stay calm since it is one case outbreak. It is an event of national importance because no cases were recorded 19 years ago,” he said.
The lethality of yellow fever is 50%; that is to say, half of the people who contract the virus die.
The virus is endemic in tropical areas of Africa and Central and South America, according to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
With information from Sputnik