Global supply of yellow fever vaccine depleted: WHO

GENEVA (Reuters) - The world's supply of vaccine against yellow fever, which kills tens of thousands each year, is under extreme pressure, a senior World Health Organization (WHO) official said on Wednesday.

"At this point our global emergency stockpile is depleted," Mike Ryan, coordinator of the WHO's global outbreak alert and response network, told reporters on a conference call.

"We are very much on the edge of our ability to supply both emergency campaigns and these preventative mass campaigns. It is a rather uncomfortable position for us to be in," he said.

The WHO relies upon three pre-qualified manufacturers of yellow fever vaccine: France's Sanofi-Aventis, Senegal's Institut Pasteur, and Bio-Manguinhos in Brazil.

The current global production capacity is 30-35 million doses, Ryan said.

The WHO has dispatched vaccines to Paraguay and Brazil in recent months to contain outbreaks of the mosquito-borne disease in those Latin American countries, weighing on the stockpile from which mass vaccination campaigns for African nations such as Senegal, Togo, Cameroon and Burkina Faso are drawn.

Ryan said it was important for the vaccines, which cost 60 U.S. cents each, to be replenished quickly and maintained at healthy levels.

"We do need to ensure better security in the number of manufacturers we have and the scale of production available," he told the teleconference.

Yellow fever is named after the jaundice that affects some of those infected with the viral hemorrhagic disease. The WHO estimates that 200,000 people catch yellow fever each year, and 30,000 die as a result.

(Reporting by Laura MacInnis; Editing by Jonathan Lynn)