This is the first mass shipment of vaccine from one developing country to another, showing that we are now more able to meet supply demands for both emergency and routine vaccines, according to Dr Adamou Yada, Regional Adviser for Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response in WHO's African Region.
Three million doses are coming from the Brazilian company, while the other three million doses will be provided by Sanofi Pasteur - one of the other two WHO pre-qualified manufacturers of Yellow Fever vaccine.
he vaccine campaign will take a week and cover the southern half of the country: a total of 33 districts in will be targeted.
The targeted areas were singled out after a risk assessment showed that there was minimal risk of yellow fever in the northern part of the country - which is largely desert and where, consequently, the ecological conditions for yellow fever virus transmission to humans are not present - while several districts in the west of the country had already been vaccinated. In total, 5.7 million people in these 33 districts will be vaccinated by local health teams and volunteers, with extensive field support provided by WHO, UNICEF and the Mali branch of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Current vaccination coverage rates in the provinces in question are estimated to be 48% in those districts where children under age 15 were vaccinated in 2006, while the rates are estimated to be much, much lower in districts not covered in 2006. The vaccination campaign is set to last one week, from 12-18 April. Once the campaign is complete, the risk of yellow fever outbreaks in Mali will be greatly reduced for a minimum of 10 years - and for many more, if routine immunization programmes include Yellow Fever vaccination and are continued over the long-term.
Mali's mass vaccination campaign is part of the Yellow Fever Initiative's efforts, with $58 million worth of support from GAVI, to drastically reduce the numbers at risk from Yellow Fever in West Africa. Mali is the third country, after Togo and Senegal, to undertake a national preventive vaccination campaign as part of the Initiative, with other countries due to follow suit as soon as sufficient vaccine is available.
