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Joan Stephenson, PhD

JAMA. 2007;297:2578.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

An effort to contain yellow fever, funded by a $58 million contribution from the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, will feature comprehensive immunization campaigns in a dozen countries in West Africa, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced last month (http://www.who.int/csr/disease/yellowfev/introduction/en/index.html).

The Yellow Fever Initiative is targeting the 12 countries that are at highest risk (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo) by immunizing more than 48 million people over the next 4 years.

Although mass vaccination campaigns in Africa between the 1940s and 1960s led to the near disappearance of yellow fever, inadequately immunized populations and urbanization set the stage for the disease to reemerge. By the 1990s, there were an estimated 200 000 annual cases, with 30 000 deaths. More than 30 African countries with a total population of 610 million people are now at risk.