Most probably yellow fever first originated in Africa. It is believed that the virus first started off in East Africa or Central Africa, and then found its way to West Africa. The virus' vector is the Aedes aegypti mosquito; and both the virus and the mosquito reached the shores of South America after 1942. The first outbreak of yellow fever most probably occurred in Yucatan in the year 1648, where the disease was name black vomit.

Even before the west experienced the first outbreak of yellow fever, the coasts of West Africa were plagued by the disease for centuries. The first outbreak of the fever in the US was in the year 1668 in New York City, and by the time the year 1893 arrived, the US had seen around 135 big outbreaks of the disease at various port cities. These outbreaks claimed around thirty percent to seventy percent of victims who fell ill.

In the year 1802, nearly all the soldiers sent to Santo Domingo by Napoleon died on account of an outbreak of yellow fever. Then in 1881, a French company stopped its work on the Panama Canal as it lost nearly twenty thousand workers to malaria and yellow fever.

A Cuban doctor named Carlos Finlay proposed that the Aedes aegypti mosquito was the vector for the virus causing yellow fever. This was put forth by him in the year 1881. However, his theory was not accepted by the scientific community, and as a result it was disregarded.

In 1927, it was finally discovered that a virus was responsible for yellow fever; and by 1936, Max Theiler along with his assistant developed a vaccine for the disease.

More Articles :

• Scientific Name Of Yellow Fever
• Who Discovered Yellow Fever ?
• Yellow Fever History
• Yellow Fever Symptoms