Summary The original ≪Pasteur treatment≫ required long series of daily injections of rabbit medulla suspension of increasing virulence. Even with the Fermi and Semple types of inactivated sheep brain vaccines, these long series remained necessary, with a high risk of neuroparalytic accidents. The first possibility of using redu ced schedules of post-exposure vaccination appeared after 1955 with the sucklingmouse-brain vaccine. But it was only after 1965, with the newly developed cell culture vaccines, (mainly the human diploid cell vaccine), that a reduced schedule of rabies treatment of only 6 injections could be recommended by the WHO. This WHO scheme is now widely used with other cell culture vaccines in several countries. New reduced schedules of rabies post-exposure vaccination are presently under study with the aim of inducing an immune response as early as possible and, at the same time, reducing the amount of vaccine used (and thus the cost of vaccination) and the number of injections: the multi-site method and the intradermal route of injection have proven to be very efficient in this respect.
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