Country Perspectives: Côte d'Ivoire
August
A stockpile of yellow fever vaccine, financed by IFFIm, enabled Abidjan to respond to a health emergency with the immunisation of two million people at risk.
When 19 cases of yellow fever were identified in the suburbs of Abidjan, a devastating epidemic looked set to take hold of the Côte d’Ivoire capital.
With limited in-country vaccines, more than two million people to immunise and a political system still recovering from a decade of instability, the country bore all the symptoms of a public health crisis in the making.
Yet, within two weeks a massive emergency response immunisation exercise, drawing on an IFFIm funded vaccine stockpile, had covered almost half of Abidjan’s five million people, defying Côte d’Ivoire’s recent turbulent past.
As one of 72 countries eligible for GAVI funding, Côte d’Ivoire was able to draw on an emergency stockpile of yellow fever vaccines in nearby Senegal for no charge. The vaccine stockpile at Dakar is one of three yellow fever reserves located around the world to help countries respond to epidemics. The others are based in France and Brazil.
All three are financed by US$ 58.6 million of IFFIm funds, facilitating mass vaccination programmes in countries across West Africa.
photo: UNICEF/Bivigou
