Reducing Cost of Rabies Post Exposure Prophylaxis: Experience of a Tertiary Care Hospital in Pakistan

摘要

BackgroundRabies is a uniformly fatal disease, but preventable by timely and correct use of post exposure prophylaxis (PEP). Unfortunately, many health care facilities in Pakistan do not carry modern life-saving vaccines and rabies immunoglobulin (RIG), assuming them to be prohibitively expensive and unsafe. Consequently, Emergency Department (ED) health care professionals remain untrained in its application and refer patients out to other hospitals. The conventional Essen regimen requires five vials of cell culture vaccine (CCV) per patient, whereas Thai Red Cross intradermal (TRC-id) regimen requires only one vial per patient, and gives equal seroconversion as compared with Essen regimen.