In June 2013, Wanda O’Donnell, BSN, Travel Nurse Consultant, traveled to Brazil as part of a medical outreach mission. Now, she is the focus of our first “Sharing the Journey” post, an opportunity for Passport Health travelers to share their travel experiences.

Part of what makes Wanda’s journey unique is what happened before her departure. While preparing for her trip to Brazil, Wanda came to Passport Health, and, in her words, immediately fell in love.

“That’s how I found Passport Health. I was going on this mission trip and needed vaccines, and came in for a consult and absolutely fell in love with what they were doing. The services and the vaccines, all of it. I expressed an interest in working as a Travel Consultant in their office. Two days after my visit to Passport Health I dropped off a copy of my resume. That is how I became a Travel Nurse Consultant at Passport Health.”

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California governor Jerry Brown signed the state bill 277 into law Tuesday, requiring all California students to be vaccinated against dangerous diseases like measles, mumps and hepatitis.

The bill, which was introduced after a measles infection at Anaheim’s Disneyland sparked an outbreak of hundreds of cases across the United States and Canada, eliminates almost all non-medical vaccine exemptions and is a significant step forward in fighting vaccine-preventable diseases.
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Polio has been nearly eradicated throughout the globe, and just three countries (Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan) still have endemic cases. But, a new study suggests that this could change if vaccination and sanitation efforts are not upheld throughout the globe, and not just in polio endemic countries.

The study, published in the June issue of the journal PLoS Biology, looked at polio cases in the United States before the 1955 introduction of the Salk polio vaccine. The study found that many children were exposed to polio by the age of 15 but had not become sick, making them asymptomatic carriers of the disease, meaning they are able to pass it on even though they do not have much in the way of symptoms.

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New research from a joint study conducted by Rockefeller University and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative suggests that an AIDS vaccine may be possible.

The research, which was conducted on mice, showed an increased immunity to the HIV infection, which could help prevent the development of the AIDS virus in infected individuals. While this is just initial research, it gives some hope to the development of a vaccine against a disease that kills more than 1.5 million people annually.

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A new, robust and comprehensive vaccination program launched in India could change the face of infectious disease in the country by 2020.

The campaign, called Mission Indradhanush for the seven colors of the rainbow, hopes to provide protection against seven key infectious diseases: diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, tuberculosis (not available in the U.S. nor Canada), measles and hepatitis B. It will also offer Japanese encephalitis and influenza vaccinations in certain parts of the country.

The Indian government hopes to bring national immunization levels to at least 90 percent by the end of 2020, the standard for most developed nations.

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