Attentiveness face to tetanus and diphtheria immunity for students between 2004 and 2005 in Morocco

The prevention and the control of tetanus have shown a great progress all over the world. But the decrease of the immunity with age and the occurrence of outbreaks of diphtheria in some countries confirm that these diseases still of a great concern. To achieve the goal, to determine the immunity status and to study the opportunity of booster doses of vaccines to tetanus and diphtheria, we have conducted a prospective seroepidemiological. study on volunteers-adults. The cases (n = 93) were students following their paramedical course in our institute. The study began on the 19th February 2004 and finished on the 4th of May 2005. All. the students receive one dose of tetanus and diphtheria vaccine in the beginning of the first year of the course, the second dose one month later and a booster dose one year after. The sera samples have been done before the first dose of vaccine and one month after each other dose of vaccine. The rate of antitoxine was determined by Elisa IgG for tetanus and diphtheria and by a rapid test of immunochromatography for tetanic antitoxine only. The mean of age of our sample was 21.66 +/- 3.76 and the sex-ratio men/women of 0.58. The results show that 23.9% of the cases were non-immunized for tetanus (<= 0.1 Ul/ml) and 27.3% have insufficient immunity. After the administration of one dose of vaccine, 5% of the cases were still non-immunized. The investigations demonstrated that about 70.6% of the cases were non-immunized to diphtheria and a rate of 18.2% have insufficient immunity before the administration of the first dose of vaccine in the institute and 16% still non-immune after the administration of the first dose of the vaccine. We recommend the enforcement of the immunity of the Moroccan population by administrating at least two doses of DT at school and college. (C) 2009 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.