Friday, May 19, 2017

What is a Ring Vaccination for EBOLA
A postgraduate question for MD Community Medicine / Medicine and Microbiology 
Ring vaccination: The vaccination of all susceptible individuals in a prescribed area around an outbreak of an infectious disease. Ring vaccination controls an outbreak by vaccinating and monitoring a ring of people around each infected individual. The idea is to form a buffer of immune individuals to prevent the spread of the disease.
Ring vaccination was used to control smallpox until the last naturally occurring case in 1977. When an infection was diagnosed, all people who were or may have been exposed were identified and vaccinated. Then, a second "ring" of people who may have been exposed to the first ring were also identified and vaccinated. Ring vaccination has been used successfully as a disease-control strategy under other circumstances, The ring is not necessarily a contiguous geographic area but captures a social network of individuals and locations that may include dwellings or workplaces further afield, where the index patient spent time while symptomatic, or the households of individuals who had contact with the patient during illness or after his or her death. RING VACCINATION FOR EBOLA There are ongoing trials by WHO in many geographic areas affected by spread of Ebola,The first study shows that rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine has high efficacy during outbreaks, that a ring-vaccination strategy has value, and that it's feasible to conduct an efficacy study amidst an epidemic. An editorial observes the need to assess the durability of immunity; attenuation of the VSV-based vaccines might reduce adverse events. The investigators in the second study observe that antibodies in the African population were considerably less durable than in Chinese participants in the phase 1 trial.
Current research on Ring Vaccination strategies in deadly communicable diseases, to contain the spread of the infection when the safety is limited with existing studies or the safety is not established
Read more at
Ref Ebola Vaccine Efficacious in Ring-Vaccination Trial in Guinea
Mary E. Wilson, MD reviewing Henao-Restrepo AM et al. Lancet 2016 Dec 22. Geisbert TW. Lancet 2016 Dec 22. Zhu F-C et al. Lancet 2016 Dec 22. Grobusch MP and Goorhuis A. Lancet 2016 Dec 22.
Dr.T.V.Rao MD Medical Reporter on Afro Asian resources

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