Spatial sampling for a rabies vaccination schedule in rural villages
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Spatial sampling for a rabies vaccination schedule in rural villages Inger Fabris-Rotelli1
· Hayley Reynolds1 · Alfred Stein1,2 · Theodor Loots1
Received: 7 January 2020 / Revised: 30 July 2020 / Accepted: 23 September 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Efforts are being made to contain rabies in Tanzania, reported in the southern highland regions, since 1954, and endemic in all districts in Tanzania currently. It has been determined that mass vaccination of at least 70% of a domestic animal population is most effective in reducing transmission of rabies. Current vaccination campaigns in Tanzanian villages have many administrative and logistical challenges. Animals roam freely, making a full population vaccination impossible. Spatial sampling of households in villages is proposed, where optimality is measured through the distance traversed by the vaccinator by foot for vaccinating at each sampled household. The walking distance is attained by incorporating a driving network between optimally determined stopping points from which the vaccinator then walks for executing vaccinations, while ensuring the 70% coverage of the animal population. We illustrate the sampling schemes on a real dataset using simulations. A systematic regular spatial sampling is found to be optimal. The vaccination scheme proposed, provides an effective way to manage a vaccination campaign. Keywords Environmental sampling · Rabies vaccination · Spatial sampling · Spatial data
1 Introduction Efforts are being made to contain rabies in Tanzania, reported in the southern highland regions, since 1954, and endemic in all districts in Tanzania currently. It was determined that mass vaccination of at least 70% of an animal population is most effective
Handling Editor: Pierre Dutilleul.
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Inger Fabris-Rotelli [email protected]
1
University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
2
University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands
123
Environmental and Ecological Statistics
in reducing transmission of rabies. Rabies affecting human villages is prevalent in domestic cats and dogs which is the target of vaccination. This minimum percentage is believed to achieve herd immunity and decrease the transmission of rabies among the population of the village. The minimum animal coverage of 70%, is suggested by the World Health Organisation (Kayali et al. 2003; Zinsstag et al. 2009; Coleman and Dye 1996; Cleaveland et al. 2003) as being most cost-effective. Achieving the 70% coverage has, however, been experienced (see Mpolya et al. 2017) as hindered by logistical and administrative challenges1 . Currently the process for vaccinating animals in rural Tanzanian villages is that a vaccination station is set up in the middle of the village with the expectation that the villagers will bring their animals for the necessary treatment. Obviously, this approach is ineffective. An alternative used for vaccination in Tanzanian villages takes some features from the EPI cluster survey method (Bostoen and Chalabi
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