Domestic Dog Vaccination to prevent the spread of Rabbis Virus

Approximately 60000 are dying every year due to rabbis in Asian and African countries due to sheer negligence in taking post prophylaxis treatment. Although the urban centers are far better in handling rabbis, rural and remote areas are still facing challenge. Since canine rabies virus  spreads mostly through the domestic dogs, dog vaccination at regular intervals could eliminate rabbis related deaths completely. Modern rabies vaccines produced on cell cultures or embryonated eggs are both safe and efficacious. At present, most of Asian countries have moved towards modernrabies vaccine usage, either through imports or local production. 

In Thailand, discontinuation of sheep brain vaccine (Semple vaccine) production in 1989 and of suckling mouse brain (Fuenzalida) vaccine in 1993, and importation of increasing quantities of modern vaccines have played a major role in the drastic reduction in the number of cases of human rabies in the country. Due to the high cost of modern cell culture rabies vaccines, outdated nerve tissue origin rabies vaccines are still administered to most socioeconomically disadvantaged people who are at an increased risk of exposure. Additionally, most modern cell culture rabies vaccines are imported into developing countries and because many countries impose an extra importation tax to them, the cost of treatment is increased. Read more.............

The Health Significance of Families Seen through the Recent Measles Outbreak

Earlier this year, at least 95 measles cases were linked to Disneyland, the fabled family destination. In this commentary, I leverage the recent rise of U.S. measles cases to illuminate the ways in which families’ social traits matter for individual and public health. I conclude with suggestions for increasing scholarship in this exciting field within social epidemiology.

Current medical care and research tends to focus on individual risk and protective factors, often overlooking how family ties and experiences influence health. Even when we implicitly realize that families influence health, our conceptual models and data structures often reduce families to individual traits and, thus, obscure their importance. 

This is exemplified in measles patients’ medical charts. Of the 159 documented measles cases presenting during the first half of 2013 in the U.S., 63% were children and 81% were unvaccinated. Five percent of the unvaccinated, pediatric patients missed their vaccination opportunities; 13% were too young for vaccination; and 79% had philosophical objections. Yet it is important to recognize who had the philosophical objections and missed the vaccination opportunities: it was the parents, not the children. This expedient recording of the parents’ behavior as a trait of the patient erases the family unit entirely, masking the ways in which familial ties influence health. Read more.................