Exploring the Causes of Low Immunization Status in School Going Children

Background: Although a definitive immunization program has been advocated for children in our country, the immunization coverage is far from satisfactory. There is paucity of survey studies related to immunization pattern. Objective: This study has been undertaken to explore the social and attitudinal factors with parents resulting into adverse immunization. Material and Methods: The study was school based cross-sectional study conducted in 50 schools of Indore district selected by random sampling from three groups. Information was collected from parents by providing pre-tested questionnaire. Result: Association of parent’s literacy and socioeconomic status with successful immunization could be established. Overall coverage rate with vaccines was poor in school going girls as compared to the boys; proving thereby that gender discrimination exists putting girls in disadvantageous position. Conclusion: It can be expected that the immunization status of school children will improve if identified risk factors such as parental education, socioeconomic status, awareness status are improved and attitudinal gender discrimination is curbed

When Can you Immunize a Bond Portfolio?.

This paper presents a condition equivalent to the existence of a Riskless Shadow Asset that guarantees a minimum return when the asset prices are convex functions of interest rates or other state variables. We apply this lemma to immunize default free and option free coupon bonds and reach three main conclusions. First, we give a solution to an old puzzle: why do simple duration matching portfolios work well in empirical studies of immunization even though they are derived in a model inconsistent with equilibrium and shifts on the term structure of interest rates are not parallel, as as sumed? Second, we establish a clear distinction between the concepts of immunized and maxmin portfolios. Third, we develop a framework that includes the main results of this literature as special cases. Next, we present a new strategy of immunization that consists in matching duration and minimizing a new linear dispersion measure of immunization risk.Immunization; Maxmin portfolio; Weak immunization condition; Worst shock; Dispersion measures;

Structural Insights From HIV-Antibody Co-Evolution And Related Immunization Studies

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) is a rapidly evolving pathogen and causes the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in humans. There are ~30-35 million people infected with HIV around the world, and ~25 million have died since the first reported cases in 1981. Additionally, each year 2-3 million people become newly infected and more than one million die of AIDS. An HIV-1 vaccine would help halt an AIDS pandemic, and efforts to develop a vaccine have focused on targeting the HIV-1 envelope, Env, found on the surface of the virus. A number of chronically infected individuals have been shown to produce antibodies, called broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs), that target many strains of HIV-1 by binding to Env, thus suggesting promise for HIV-1 vaccine development. BnAbs to take years to develop and have a number of traits that inhibit their production; thus, a number of researchers are trying to understand the pathways that result in bnAb production so that they can be elicited more rapidly by vaccination. This review discusses results and implications from two HIV-1 infected individuals studied longitudinally who produced bnAbs against two different sites on HIV-1 Env, and immunization studies that use Envs deriving from those individuals

Dispersion measures as immunization risk measures

The quadratic and linear cash flow dispersion measures M2 and Ñ are two immunization risk measures designed to build immunized bond portfolios. This paper generalizes these two measures by showing that any dispersion measure is an immunization risk measure and therefore, it sets up a tool to be used in empirical testing. Each new measure is derived from a different set of shocks (changes on the term structure of interest rates) and depends on the corresponding subset of worst shocks. Consequently, a criterion for choosing appropriate immunization risk measures is to take those developed from the most reasonable sets of shocks and the associated subset of worst shocks and then select those that work best empirically. Adopting this approach, this paper then explores both numerical examples and a short empirical study on the Spanish Bond Market in the mid-1990s to show that measures between linear and quadratic are the most appropriate, and amongst them, the linear measure has the best properties. This confirms previous studies on US and Canadian markets that maturity-constrained-duration-matched portfolios also have good empirical behavior.Publicad

Immunization strategies targeting newly arrived migrants in Non-EU countries of the mediterranean basin and black sea

Background: The World Health Organization recommends that host countries ensure appropriate vaccinations to refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. However, information on vaccination strategies targeting migrants in host countries is limited. Methods: In 2015-2016 we carried out a survey among national experts from governmental bodies of 15 non-EU countries of the Mediterranean and Black Sea in order to document and share national vaccination strategies targeting newly arrived migrants. Results: Four countries reported having regulations/procedures supporting the immunization of migrants at national level, one at sub-national level and three only targeting specific population groups. Eight countries offer migrant children all the vaccinations included in their national immunization schedule; three provide only selected vaccinations, mainly measles and polio vaccines. Ten and eight countries also offer selected vaccinations to adolescents and adults respectively. Eight countries provide vaccinations at the community level; seven give priority vaccines in holding centres or at entry sites. Data on administered vaccines are recorded in immunization registries in nine countries. Conclusions: Although differing among countries, indications for immunizing migrants are in place in most of them. However, we cannot infer from our findings whether those strategies are currently functioning and whether barriers to their implementation are being faced. Further studies focusing on these aspects are needed to develop concrete and targeted recommendations for action. Since migrants are moving across countries, development of on-line registries and cooperation between countries could allow keeping track of administered vaccines in order to appropriately plan immunization series and avoid unnecessary vaccinations

Rapid decay in the relative efficiency of quarantine to halt epidemics in networks

Several recent studies have tackled the issue of optimal network immunization by providing efficient criteria to identify key nodes to be removed in order to break apart a network, thus preventing the occurrence of extensive epidemic outbreaks. Yet, although the efficiency of those criteria has been demonstrated also in empirical networks, preventive immunization is rarely applied to real-world scenarios, where the usual approach is the a posteriori attempt to contain epidemic outbreaks using quarantine measures. Here we compare the efficiency of prevention with that of quarantine in terms of the tradeoff between the number of removed and saved nodes on both synthetic and empirical topologies. We show how, consistent with common sense, but contrary to common practice, in many cases preventing is better than curing: depending on network structure, rescuing an infected network by quarantine could become inefficient soon after the first infection.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Assessing Interventions for Declining Childhood Immunization Dropout - A Systematic Review

Childhood routine immunization is a critical stage to ensure the health of infants and protect against serious diseases. Therefore, adequate strategies are urgently needed to increase childhood immunization coverage to prevent global disease and death. This review has identified the effect of interventions to increase immunization coverage among children in developing countries. A review included published studies from 2013 to 2023 on randomized controlled trials (RCT) and pre-post intervention that met eligible criteria. All included studies had been conducted in English-published articles on Pub Med and Google Scholar, without being limited to geographical sites. A total of 1107 published articles were accessed and 12 final eligible articles were reviewed. 66.67% of the included studies were conducted in Africa, 16.67% in South East Asia countries, and others were conducted in East Asia and America. These studies demonstrated that different interventions (SMS and call reminders, sticker reminders, immunization education, home-based records, and community-centered) had significant increases in immunization coverage for childhood compared to the control group with standard care or without any interventions. The present findings suggest that interventions including implementing SMS and call reminders, sticker reminders, education both from health workers and local leaders, and home-based records can potentially reduce immunization dropout. However, strategies to improve coverage for immunization uptake should also be considered preferred community-based to extend the marginal groups

Estimates of measles case fatality ratios: a comprehensive review of community-based studies.

BACKGROUND: Global deaths from measles have decreased notably in past decades, due to both increases in immunization rates and decreases in measles case fatality ratios (CFRs). While some aspects of the reduction in measles mortality can be monitored through increases in immunization coverage, estimating the level of measles deaths (in absolute terms) is problematic, particularly since incidence-based methods of estimation rely on accurate measures of measles CFRs. These ratios vary widely by geographic and epidemiologic context and even within the same community from year-to-year. METHODS: To understand better the variations in CFRs, we reviewed community-based studies published between 1980 and 2008 reporting age-specific measles CFRs. RESULTS: The results of the search consistently document that measles CFRs are highest in unvaccinated children under age 5 years; in outbreaks; the lowest CFRs occur in vaccinated children regardless of setting. The broad range of case and death definitions, study populations and geography highlight the complexities in extrapolating results for global public health planning. CONCLUSIONS: Values for measles CFRs remain imprecise, resulting in continued uncertainty about the actual toll measles exacts

Influenza epidemiology and immunization during pregnancy: Final report of a world health organization working group

From 2014 to 2017, the World Health Organization convened a working group to evaluate influenza disease burden and vaccine efficacy to inform estimates of maternal influenza immunization program impact. The group evaluated existing systematic reviews and relevant primary studies, and conducted four new systematic reviews. There was strong evidence that maternal influenza immunization prevented influenza illness in pregnant women and their infants, although data on severe illness prevention were lacking. The limited number of studies reporting influenza incidence in pregnant women and infants under six months had highly variable estimates and underrepresented low- and middle-income countries. The evidence that maternal influenza immunization reduces the risk of adverse birth outcomes was conflicting, and many observational studies were subject to substantial bias. The lack of scientific clarity regarding disease burden or magnitude of vaccine efficacy against severe illness poses challenges for robust estimation of the potential impact of maternal influenza immunization programs