2016 Angola and DR Congo yellow fever outbreak case. Between 18 March and 22 April, the WHO was notified of 11 imported cases in China. Officials in Asia were concerned about the threat of yellow fever. On 28 March, ProMED-mail moderators Jack Woodall and Tom Yuill issued a strongly worded warning on the threat of yellow fever for countries that have endemic dengue fever (and thus the mosquito vector of yellow fever and dengue fever, Aedes aegypti), and particularly for countries in Asia, where until recently yellow fever has never appeared. Urban populations and mosquito-infested slums in Asia and Africa are much larger than in the past. A
Yellow fever probably transferred to North and South America with the importation of slaves from Africa, part of the Columbian Exchange following European exploration and colonization. The first definitive outbreak of yellow fever in the New World was in 1647 on the island of Barbados. An outbreak was recorded by Spanish colonists in 1648 in the Yucatán Peninsula, where the indigenous Mayan people called the illness "xekik" ("blood vomit"). In 1685, Brazil suffered its first epidemic, in Recife. The first mention of the disease by the name "yellow fever" occurred in 1744. McNeill argues that the environmental and ecological disruption caused by