The role of Aedes mosquito in Yellow fever virus transmission and its control in Africa

A review

Abstract

Introduction: Throughout the world, many nuisances and potential transmitters of human and animal infections Aedes mosquitoes are distributed in consideration of many biotopes. The female Aedes mosquitoes are commonly vectoring arboviruses by simply extracting blood from people, birds and other animals to obtain proteins needed to develop their eggs. Yellow fever virus, Dengue virus, Chikungunya virus, Rift Valley fever virus and Zika virus are among the vector-borne diseases. Understanding the competent vectors and the transmission cycle of Yellow Fever is the first step of collecting evidence since it provides a suitable contribution for control strategies in different contexts.

Objective: The main objective of this paper was to review the role of Aedes mosquitoes in Yellow fever virus transmission and its control in African regions.

Methods: Searches were conducted in the indexers of scientific articles from PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed) and sciELO (http://www.scielo.org) using the combination of the terms: “Aedes and Yellow fever virus transmission, competent vectors of Yellow fever, Transmission of Yellow fever in Aedes mosquitoes population, Role of Aedes and its species in yellow fever transmission and Yellow fever virus control and its methods’’.

Conclusion: The circulation of the Yellow fever virus in the tropical regions of Africa relies on distinct hosts and vectors which can be in sylvatic, rural, or urban transmission cycles. The transmission of the virus among humans is associated with the presence of vectors and an unvaccinated population. The vectorial role can be influenced by the density, longevity, and competence of the vector and associated environmental, behavioral, cellular and biochemical factors. Aedesaegypti, Aedesafricanus, Aedesluteocephalus, Aedesbromeliae, Aedesfurciferand Aedestaylori have been shown to be the main vectors of yellow fever. The two core control strategies of yellow fever are vector control which requires a constant effort wherever the risk of vector development is high and immunization /vaccination of populations at risk. Chemical, biological and environmental sanitation are the best and most frequently used control methods in Africa. Integrated control taking into account sanitation and associated with other vector-borne diseases, is cost-effective and should be favoured.