Rabies: Haiti Pre-decision Brief for Public Health Action

Rabies: Haiti Pre-decision Brief for Public Health Action
Key recommendations
Diagnostic capacity and surveillance

► Conduct community outreach to educate the public about the disease, as a means of bite prevention and enhanced local awareness for initial suspicion of cases.
Encourage health care providers and agricultural/veterinary staff to consider rabies in the differential diagnosis of any acute progressive encephalitis.

► Increase the availability of ante-mortem, and post-mortem, rabies diagnostic testing in suspect human and animal cases and other potential causes of encephalopathy. Build capacity for broader, de-centralized veterinary diagnosis of rabies in suspect animals. Provide training and access to appropriate laboratory facilities, equipment, and reagents in standard confirmatory rabies diagnosis and new procedures, such as a direct rapid immunohistochemical test (dRIT), for initial presumptive diagnosis.

► Create an adverse event reporting system for vaccine-preventable diseases, such as rabies.

► Sustain broader de-centralized surveillance for acute progressive encephalitis in remote healthcare and agricultural facilities, monitor reports, employ GIS and related epidemiological techniques, and ensure that prevention and control measures are implemented in affected areas based upon the identification of rabies foci, together with other stake holders along the common border in the Dominican Republic.

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http://emergency.cdc.gov/disasters/earthquakes/haiti/rabies_pre-decision_brief.asp