This chapter analyzes how the 1928 yellow fever epidemic caused a major political upset in colonial Dakar, reoriented West African public health policies, and empowered the Pasteur Institute in the region. With the plague outbreaks of 1914, public health responses became politically controversial, as they became used by African leaders such as Blaise Diagne. The disease ecology of yellow fever, however, which affected primarily Europeans rather than natives of West Africa, empowered Diagne to call out racist French policies and threatened the stability of French rule. The Pasteur Institute’s proposal to develop a vaccine was widely seen as an opportunity to calm the political situation.
Yellow Fever Vaccination, Simple or Associated with Vaccination Against Smallpox, of the Populations of French West Africa by the Method of the Pasteur Institute of Dakar