OBJECTIVE Evaluate knowledge of rubella and acceptability of vaccination and identify sources of health information among brazilian adults to inform communication strategies for a national vaccination campaign to eliminate rubella and congenital rubella syndrome (CRS). METHODS From 5-8 July 2008 a qualitative telephone survey was conducted among a nonprobabilistic sample of brazilian adults 1...

BACKGROUND The RTS,S malaria vaccine may soon be licensed. Models of impact of such vaccines have mainly considered deployment via the World Health Organization's Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) in areas of stable endemic transmission of Plasmodium falciparum, and have been calibrated for such settings. Their applicability to low transmission settings is unclear. Evaluations of the eff...

BACKGROUND Mass drug administration (MDA) of praziquantel has been the intervention of choice against schistosomiasis but with limited success in interrupting the transmission. The development of anti-Schistosoma vaccines is underway. Our objective is to quantify the population-level impact of anti-Schistosoma vaccines when administered alone and in combination with mass drug administration (MD...

Among the bacterial vaccines used for prophylactic measures, Cholera vaccme does not give a complete protection or a satisfactory mass vaccinations result compared with other biologics used for the prevention of other human infectious diseases. This relative failure is partly due to the fact that cholera used to be, for many centuries, a problem in a limited part of Asia and from this asian foc...

BACKGROUND After the transition from socialism to a market economy in 1990, human brucellosis re-emerged in Mongolia. The aim of our study was to estimate a representative seroprevalence of Brucella spp. and to determine risk factors for brucellosis seropositivity among rural people. METHODS A cross-sectional study with multistage random selection was conducted in eight provinces of Mongolia....

This study assesses the relationship between political partisanship and attitudes and behavior with respect to the H1N1 virus (swine flu) crisis of 2009 in general, and the U.S. mass vaccination program in particular. I argue that even seemingly nonpartisan political issues like public health are increasingly characterized by partisan polarization in public attitudes and that such polarization ...

BACKGROUND Five years since the successful introduction of MenAfriVac in a mass vaccination campaign targeting 1- to 29-year-olds in Burkina Faso, consideration must be given to the optimal strategies for sustaining population protection. This study aims to estimate the economic impact of a range of vaccination strategies in Burkina Faso. METHODS We performed a cost-of-illness study, comparin...

Smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s, but new outbreaks could be seeded by bioterrorism or accidental release. Substantial vaccine-induced morbidity and mortality make pre-emptive mass vaccination controversial, and if vaccination is voluntary, then there is a conflict between self- and group interests. This conflict can be framed as a tragedy of the commons, in which herd immunity plays the ro...

BACKGROUND Being highly contagious by person-to-person transmission, varicella can easily spread within the multinational population of a cruise ship and into communities ashore. The aim of the study was to report the prevalence of varicella infections in a fleet of cruise ships during a two-year period and to discuss measures to prevent and contain shipboard outbreaks. MATERIAL AND METHODS A...

OBJECTIVE To compare the potential cost effectiveness of vaccination against hepatitis B virus (HBV) targeted at genitourinary clinic (GU) attendees with that of universal infant vaccination. DESIGN A mathematical model of sexual and perinatal transmission of HBV was used to compare the effectiveness among heterosexual and homosexual populations of programmes of mass infant vaccination and ta...