Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in Turkey is controlled using biannual mass vaccination of cattle. However, vaccine protection is undermined by population turnover and declining immunity. A dynamic model of the Turkish cattle population was created. Assuming biannual mass vaccination with a single-dose primary course, vaccine history was calculated for the simulated population (number of doses and...

OBJECTIVE To determine the feasibility of using volunteers to assist in school-located mass vaccination clinics for influenza. METHODS A set of elementary school-based mass vaccination clinics was implemented in Carroll County, Maryland by the local health department in the 2005-2006 school year. In addition to using health department personnel, fiscal restraints necessitated using medical vo...

A "contact network" that models infection transmission comprises nodes (or individuals) that are linked when they are in contact and can potentially transmit an infection. Through analysis and simulation, we studied the influence of the distribution of the number of contacts per node, defined as degree, on infection spreading and its control by vaccination. Three random contact networks of vari...

BACKGROUND Previous smallpox ring vaccination models based on contact tracing over a network suggest that ring vaccination would be effective, but have not explicitly included response logistics and limited numbers of vaccinators. METHODS We developed a continuous-time stochastic simulation of smallpox transmission, including network structure, post-exposure vaccination, vaccination of contac...

Mass-vaccination campaigns are an important strategy in the global fight against poliomyelitis and measles. The large-scale logistics required for these mass immunisation campaigns magnifies the need for research into the effectiveness and optimal deployment of pulse vaccination. In order to better understand this control strategy, we propose a mathematical model accounting for the disease dyna...

The identification of adverse events following immunization (AEFI) and their prompt investigation are important to allow a timely and scientifically based response to the users of immunization services. This article presents an analysis of notified AEFI cases between 1999 and 2005 and their temporal association with 2001 yellow fever vaccination campaign, AEFI notification attributed to yellow ...

INTRODUCTION Mass vaccinations are a main strategy in the deployment of oral cholera vaccines. Campaigns avoid giving vaccine to pregnant women because of the absence of safety data of the killed whole-cell oral cholera (rBS-WC) vaccine. Balancing this concern is the known higher risk of cholera and of complications of pregnancy should cholera occur in these women, as well as the lack of expect...

INTRODUCTION To estimate the post-campaign level of measles vaccination coverage in Guinea. METHODS Interview of parents and observation of measles vaccination cards of children aged 9 to 59 months during the mass measles campaign. A nationwide cluster randomized sample under health District stratification. RESULTS 64.2% (95%CI = 60.9% to 67.4%) of children were vaccinated and had their mea...

BACKGROUND Noroviruses are the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis and foodborne diarrheal disease in the United States. Norovirus vaccine development has progressed in recent years, but critical questions remain regarding which age groups should be vaccinated to maximize population impact. METHODS We developed a deterministic, age-structured compartmental model of norovirus transmission a...