History of yellow fever 1,235 fatalities were recorded of an estimated 12,000 cases. Smaller outbreaks occurred in Saint-Nazaire in France, Swansea in Wales, and in other European port cities following the arrival of vessels carrying the mosquito vector. The first mention of the disease by the name "yellow fever" occurred in 1744. Many famous people, mostly during the 18th through the 20th centuries, contracted and then recovered from, or died of, yellow fever. The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 struck during the summer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the highest fatalities in the United States were recorded. The disease probably was brought by refugees and
Yellow fever vaccine Foundation to improve the vaccine from the "Asibi" strain, discovered that a favorable chance mutation in the attenuated virus had produced a highly efficacious strain that was named 17D. After field trials in Brazil, over one million people were vaccinated by 1939, without severe complications. For his work on the yellow fever vaccine, Theiler received the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Only the 17D vaccine remains in use today. The outbreak of yellow fever in Angola in January 2016 has raised concerns about whether the global supply of vaccine is adequate to meet the need during a large