Yellow fever vaccines stockpiles
In 2000, a global shortage of yellow fever vaccine occurred mainly due to a combination of the relatively long time needed to produce vaccine and poor epidemiological surveillance and reporting in at-risk countries, which made forecasting vaccine needs difficult.
A stockpile of 2 million doses reserved for outbreak response was initially established in 2001. Since May 2016, the stockpile was increased to 6 million doses available at all times for outbreak response.
From 2001 until October 2022, approximately 99 million doses of yellow fever vaccine were released and shipped to 20 countries facing outbreaks.
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Accessing ICG vaccine stocks
To request access to ICG Yellow Fever vaccine stocks, the country should submit an ICG request form for yellow fever vaccine, annexes and other required documents as per the checklist in the request form to the ICG Secretariat (WHO Geneva). An ICG member agency (IRFC, MSF, UNICEF, WHO) present in the country can also submit the application on behalf of the Ministry of Health. It is highly recommended that the country submits the request to the ICG secretariat within 7 days after confirmation of the outbreak. The ICG secretariat at WHO then circulates this request to the members (IFRC, MSF, UNICEF, and WHO) for review and assessment within 1 day after receiving the country request. Additional information can be requested to the country, if needed.
Requests are evaluated taking into account the epidemiological situation, vaccination strategy, vaccine availability in the emergency stockpile, pre-existing stocks in the country and operational aspects of the epidemic response.
Following a rapid consultation and evaluation process, the ICG decision to release vaccines and other supplies is communicated to the requesting country within 2 working days, once all necessary information has been provided. If approved, UNICEF organizes the delivery of vaccines to the country, ideally within 7 days.
The ICG mandate is to respond to the outbreak and break the transmission of diseases as soon as possible in order to save as many lives as possible. Therefore, countries should implement the reactive vaccination campaign within 10 days after receiving the vaccines.