Yellow fever is a tropical disease usually found in parts of South America and Africa.
Two types of yellow fever are known.
There's jungle yellow fever, which primarily affects monkeys, and then there's urban yellow fever, which primarily affects humans.
This fever is generally mild but can cause other illnesses that are life-threatening.
When one gets yellow fever, symptoms such as chills, muscle aches, headache, backache and vomiting may be experienced.
This can also lead to kidney and liver failure.
The name of this disease was derived from the effect of kidney and liver failure on human beings.
Patients become jaundiced -- their skin and the white of their eyes turn yellowish when the disease progresses.
For a long time, doctors and scientists argued as to how fever disease is contracted.
Several theories were given, but none were sufficient to explain the communication of the disease.
It was Dr.
Carlos Finlay, a Cuban scientist and doctor who first postulated that the fever's carriers are actually mosquitoes.
Several exhaustive research and studies were done to prove this, but it was almost 20 years later that this theory was completely verified.
It was his earlier research that opened several venues in the fight against the fever.
Dr.
Carlos Finlay, the man from Havana, Cuba is known as a pioneer in fever research.
Other scientists in this field from all over the world credit him with the discovery of the carrier of this virus and the way it transfers from one host to another.
Because of his achievements in the field of research and medicine, he served as Cuba's chief health officer from 1902 to 1909.
This achievement, no doubt, adds glory to the Cuban flag and brings pride to Cubans everywhere.