Yellow Fever Symptoms

Yellow fever is a viral infection transmitted by mosquitoes. It gets its name from one of its more serious side effects of jaundice caused by Hepatitis. The virus does not automatically show signs when you are infected until around 6 days later. Yellow fever symptoms have two main stages of development. These are the acute stage, and the toxic stage.

The Acute Stage
In the Acute stage, Yellow Fever symptoms include fevers, headaches, shivers, muscle pain and stiffness, vomiting, slowed heart rate and nausea. It is often mistaken for a mild bout of Influenza during this phase. However, this quickly degenerates and within a time period of 24 hours around 15% of people start the Toxic stage of Yellow Fever symptoms.

The Toxic Stage
The symptoms for this stage include jaundice, fever, abdominal pains, vomiting, bleeding from the mouth, nose and eyes and blood in the stool. The liver becomes seriously damaged and there is a prominent danger of kidney failure.
This is an extremely serious and fatal condition if it enters this stage and at least 20% of people who develop the Toxic Yellow Fever symptoms will die within 14 days. If you recover from yellow fever you will then have immunity to it for life.

There is a vaccine for yellow fever which has been used effectively for the last 60 years, the vaccine can only be administered by a specialist and you will need to visit a designated Yellow Fever Clinic before travelling to tropical regions. The Vaccine becomes effective around 10 days after it has been injected and should be repeated every 10 years. Ask your doctor about yellow fever when planning for holidays to risk areas. Your doctor will be able to give you advice and instructions to obtaining a vaccine for a safe holiday.