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BIOS
O.R.
May 6, 2008 07:39
16 yrs ago
English term

exonerative contacts

English Medical Medical (general) vaccination
in a sentence: "Recommended for exonerative contacts (prevention of epidemics in restricted communities)" - indications for varicella vaccine, the construction "exonerative contacts" does not exist in Google apart from this single article, that was written mainly by Scandinavians.
Responses
3 for cases when individuals are cleared from having had contact with the virus before

Discussion

Ken Cox May 9, 2008:
... usage) or 'in case of restricted communities exempt from contact with the virus' (again not common usage).
Ken Cox May 9, 2008:
In French, 'exonerer' means 'to exempt', which is not the same as the meaning of the English cognate. Possible interpretations of the intended meaning here are 'for exemption from contact with the disease' (although this is also *not* common English...
Piotr Sawiec (asker) May 9, 2008:
authors reply "it means protecting susceptible individuals in an outbreak setting in a restricted community, regardless of a history of contact with varicella" just to prevent the outbreak from spreading, still not very clear, and even less clear why they used this term :-)
Piotr Sawiec (asker) May 6, 2008:
I wrote to the author and will let you know his answer. As for Max's answer, it sounds plausible, but why did they use this strange word rather than using "seronegative" like in other cases. Cleared in this context would mean seronegative, susceptible to infection.
d_vachliot (X) May 6, 2008:
Well, it would seem that this is an error (typing or otherwise.) Since you appear to already have an explanation of the term in parenthesis, why don't you take it from there? I doubt there's much else you can do.
Ken Cox May 6, 2008:
'exonerate' means to absolve someone from blame or release someone from an obligation. I don'[t see how this applies to prisoners (rather the opposite IMHO). Perhaps the author meant 'inadvertent contacts' (in the sense of unintentional/unavoidable)
Piotr Sawiec (asker) May 6, 2008:
there is not much context it is just a table with indications for varicella vaccinations, among immunocompromised patients etc. (I can copy the whole table cell but it will not provide more real context). Why prisoners? Because of the meaning of "exoneration", and "restricted communities". If it really is a wrong word then perhaps I should write the author what he meant.
d_vachliot (X) May 6, 2008:
Prisoners=restricted communities->epidemics
Ken Cox May 6, 2008:
Can you provide more context (if only so we can see where you got the idea of a reference to prisoners)? On the face of it, it sounds like someone chose the wrong word.
Piotr Sawiec (asker) May 6, 2008:
convicts? Maybe it is a kind of euphemism for prisoners?

Responses

1 hr
Selected

for cases when individuals are cleared from having had contact with the virus before

This is the full sentence:
“Recommended for exonerative contacts (prevention of epidemics in restricted communities), immunocompromised patients, leukaemia, solid tumours, chronic renal failure, asthma, autoimmune diseases, cystic fibrosis, transplant patients, seronegative healthcare workers and seronegative family members of high-risk patients.”

So the vaccine Varilrix for varicella immunisation is recommended for only those individuals that are weak (immunocompromised, have leukaemia, etc.), but also for those who have not yet had a chance to attract the infection early in life, perhaps because they live in a restricted community (maybe an asylum, hospital, nursery home etc).

Contact in this context means contact with the varicella virus. People (children) in restricted communities can be officially cleared (= exonerated) by medial supervisors of an institution from ever having contact with the virus, because none of the inmates ever attracted it.

However, when in such circumstances one of the inmates does get infected, hell breaks loose and an epidemic ensues.

The same article mentions:
“In Italy, since July 2002, Sicily has offered the free vaccination of children in the second year of life, *as well as a catch-up programme of 12 year olds with a negative history of varicella* [69].”

So an exonerate contact is a case in which an individual is known not to have had a chance to have contact with the virus earlier (is cleared from having had contact), and therefore is particularly succeptible to attract it when an epidemic occurs.


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Note added at 1 hr (2008-05-06 09:30:59 GMT)
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The sentence was a recommendation for vaccination in Italy, that is why I added the part about Italy.
Peer comment(s):
neutral Ken Cox : Sounds plausible. I'd be willing to bet that 'exonerative contacts' is a literal mistranslation of (e.g.) 'contacts exoneratifs', which is not the same thing
21 mins
thanks
Something went wrong...
2 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "it was not exactly that, but even authors were slightly confused :-)"
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