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200  Yellow Fever Still Survives In Jungles of Africa, Brazil
     The Washington Post  March 14, 1970

     Yellow fever is a virus disease almost unknown to American
medicine.  Since a 1905 epidemic on the Gulf Coast that left 554 deaths,
vaccination and quarantine of exposed travelers have kept the virus out
of this country.  The last known importation was an isolated case in
1924 in Houston, Tex.

     The name "yellow fever" evokes fond memories of the heroes of
medical research. Paul de Kruif's "Microbe Hunters" was one of the 
inspirational guides of my own generation; I warmly recall reading ,as a
boy, of Walter Reed and his fellow volunteers, sweating it out in a
filthy house that was tainted with yellow fever but screened to keep
out the Aedes mosquitoes that proved to be the carrier of the 
contagion.

     But the text goes on: "In 1926, there is hardly enough of the
(virus) left in the world to put on the points of six pins ... in a
few years it will be as completely extinct as the dinosaurs."  
Unhappily, this is not so.

     The catch is the persistence of the virus as an often harmless
disease of wild monkeys in the jungles of central Africa and Brazil.
It reaches man, and the Aedes mosquitoes that abound in his villages
and towns, particularly in warmer climates.  The mosquito can, never-
theless, flourish in port cities as far north as New York and Boston.

     Jungle yellow fever has, then, remained a constant threat to the
urban populations of South America and Africa.  An explosive epidemic
struck Rio de Janeiro in 1928, and during the following decade it
became clear that the eradication of Aedes in the towns was the only
way to security.

     Starting in the 1940's, the Latin American health authorities
mounted an aggressive campaign, which has been substantially successful.
Yellow fever is still reported to the extent of a dozen cases a
year, but these can all be traced to direct contact with the jungle  
reservoir.  Strange to say, the United States is the major remaining 
stronghold of the Aedes mosquito, primarily in the Gulf states and
Puerto Rico; most of the Caribbean area has it also.  Being isolated
from direct access to the jungle, these areas are free of yellow fever
and likely to remain so--if we keep up our vigilance over international
traffic, if every other vulnerable country (including Cuba and Haiti)
does the same and if we are reasonably lucky.

     Is this an acceptable level of security to a nation that will
spend hundreds of billions for its military defense?

     In 1933, the United States joined the Pan-American bloc in the
formal program for hemispheric eradication of Aedes.  In 1969, in the
sweep of the federal economy wave, the program was completely and 
formally abandoned.

     There are reasonable arguments to criticize the program.  Its aim
of total eradication of the mosquito was undoubtedly too ambitious,
and it relied too heavily on rote uses of pesticides like DDT.  It
should have had a stronger research base-but that, also, was wiped out
in the economy move.

     One cannot, however, accept the argument offered by one senator
that dropping it was a good thing merely because "not a single case of
yellow fever had been reported in the last 40 years."  Senegal, in
West Africa, might have given similar testimony until 1965, when its
epidemic mounted to some 10,000 cases and 1,500 deaths.  A flareup of
jungle yellow fever in eastern Panama in the same year was probably 
held to the other side of the Canal Zone mainly by the accident of
severe drought.

     Barring some unusually bad luck, a penetration of yellow fever
into the southern United States could probably be contained to a few
hundred deaths by urgent quarantines, vaccination and mosquito  
suppression measures after the fact.  The Asian continent, above all
India, is far more vulnerable in view of the abundance of Aedes 
mosquitoes, monkeys and people with marginal hygienic protection.

     In the era of the 747 jets, every case of yellow fever anywhere
in the world harbors the seeds of genocide.
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