Disease

Angola: Yellow fever epidemic declared over

Angolan Health Minister Luís Gomes Sambo declared Friday in Luanda the end of the yellow fever epidemic in the country, six months after the confirmation of the last case of this disease and an active epidemiological surveillance at the national level. Angola had notified the last confirmed case of yellow fever on June 23, 2016, in the Provinces of Cunene and Cuanza Norte.

According to the final report presented this Friday, from December 2015 to June 2016, Angola reported a total of 884 confirmed cases and 381 deaths from yellow fever in 16 of its 18 provinces. Luanda, Benguela, Huambo and Huíla were the provinces most affected, and the lethality rate across the country was 8.6%. Health authorities and partners say they have immunized 18 million people in mass vaccination campaigns against yellow fever in 85 high-risk municipalities, representing 70% of the target population estimated at 25.7 million people.

Bird Flu Outbreak in Iran

Iran has killed hundreds of thousands of birds in recent weeks as avian flu spreads across seven provinces of the country, officials have reported.

More than 1,000 wild birds, mostly geese, have been found dead in the Mighan wetland in central Iran, the environmental protection organization told state news agency IRNA on Monday.

IRNA said 63,000 chickens, along with 800,000 fertilized eggs and day-old chicks, were culled at a farm in Qazvin province in recent days after an outbreak of the deadly H1N8 and H1N5 strains of the disease.

That adds to the 725,000 birds destroyed since mid-November across the country following nine flu outbreaks, according to a report from the World Organization for Animal Health released last week.