Have you heard about the yellow fever that is currently spreading in Nigeria?
If you haven’t, you better read up on it because the disease has reportedly claimed 16 lives in that country alone.
To help prevent the disease from reaching our shores, the government has now been put on high alert.
A Bernama report quoted Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah as saying that the health authorities will work very closely with the Immigration Department to check, at entry points, if foreigners or Malaysians who have been to high-risk countries have been vaccinated against the disease.
If they are indeed coming from high risk countries that include Africa and South America, they can be quarantined for up to six days upon entering the country.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), yellow fever is "an acute viral haemorrhagic disease transmitted by infected mosquitoes".
In case you're wondering, the 'yellow' in the name comes from the jaundice that affects some patients.
If you've contracted yellow fever, you'll probably suffer from a bout of fever, headache, jaundice, nausea, muscle pain, fatigue and vommiting.
While patients usually recover from yellow fever in between three to four days, there are those who enter a second, more toxic phase that would lead to death.
Those who suffer from the second phase would get really high fever and have several body systems affected, usually the the liver and the kidneys.
The patients would then develop jaundice, experience abdominal pain and dark urine, and bleeding can occur from the mouth, eyes, nose or stomach.
The WHO reported that those who enter the toxic phase will typically die within seven to ten days.
If you've been to any of the at-risk locations mentioned above, better get yourself checked, yeah? Better be safe than be sorry.
If you haven’t, you better read up on it because the disease has reportedly claimed 16 lives in that country alone.
To help prevent the disease from reaching our shores, the government has now been put on high alert.
A Bernama report quoted Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah as saying that the health authorities will work very closely with the Immigration Department to check, at entry points, if foreigners or Malaysians who have been to high-risk countries have been vaccinated against the disease.
If they are indeed coming from high risk countries that include Africa and South America, they can be quarantined for up to six days upon entering the country.
What exactly is yellow fever?
And before you answer that, no; it's not a type of fever that is yellow in colour.According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), yellow fever is "an acute viral haemorrhagic disease transmitted by infected mosquitoes".
In case you're wondering, the 'yellow' in the name comes from the jaundice that affects some patients.
If you've contracted yellow fever, you'll probably suffer from a bout of fever, headache, jaundice, nausea, muscle pain, fatigue and vommiting.
While patients usually recover from yellow fever in between three to four days, there are those who enter a second, more toxic phase that would lead to death.
Those who suffer from the second phase would get really high fever and have several body systems affected, usually the the liver and the kidneys.
The patients would then develop jaundice, experience abdominal pain and dark urine, and bleeding can occur from the mouth, eyes, nose or stomach.
The WHO reported that those who enter the toxic phase will typically die within seven to ten days.
If you've been to any of the at-risk locations mentioned above, better get yourself checked, yeah? Better be safe than be sorry.
