Editorial
WHO bites back rabies pre-travel vaccination schedules – Implications for travel medicine

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmaid.2018.04.013Get rights and content

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Conclusion

WHO has set an ambitious goal to reduce the number of Rabies deaths in the next 12 years. Cornerstone is an accelerated, one-week PrEP schedule enabling the immunization of more people; travelers and people living in high endemic areas alike, because of considerable gains in time and cost savings of the proposed scheme. Despite limited data to support this approach, the proposed two-dose, one week scheme appears justifiable as a major building block of the global rabies elimination strategy.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge Imke Schreuder (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, The Netherlands) for sharing their data about RIG in The Netherlands.

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There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (6)

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    2021, The Lancet Regional Health - Europe
    Citation Excerpt :

    The increasing risk of acquiring diseases in high-income countries is exemplified by measles [18,19] due to increasing vaccine hesitancy [20], and should capitalize on trends towards inoculation schemes that require less antigen, such as the intradermal route of application [21]. The recent changes in rabies [22] and yellow fever vaccination [23] regimens are prominent examples. The occurrence of documented transmission of rabies from non-human primates (NHPs) to humans, although rare, implies that RPEP is indicated in patients injured by NHPs in rabies-enzootic countries [24–27].

  • Epidemiology of rabies cases among international travellers, 2013–2019: A retrospective analysis of published reports

    2020, Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease
    Citation Excerpt :

    As it conveys life-long boostability, pre-travel vaccination which has been recently simplified from three doses over one month to two doses over one week [34] should be considered, and not only to long-term travelers since the median duration of travel was 15 days in patients seeking care for RPEP after travel and 20 days in those seeking care during travel, in the GeoSentinel survey [31] and the median time between departure from home and occurrence of exposure to a potentially rabid animal was nine days in a Dutch study conducted among patients seeking care for RPEP on return to the Netherlands [35]. This shortened rabies pre-travel vaccination two-dose schedule, and the use of the intra-dermal route that allows reducing the amount of compound needed [36] makes pre-travel vaccination easier and cheaper [37,38]. Easier access to rabies pre-travel vaccination is of major importance given that animal exposure in international travelers can happen anywhere on almost any continents, including in countries endemic for rabies as recently demonstrated in an updated GeoSentinel survey [39].

  • Intradermal travel vaccinations-when less means more

    2019, Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease
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