Media/Policy Watch
This section is intended to alert readers to substantive news, analysis and opinion from the general media on vaccines, immunization, global; public health and related themes. Media Watch is not intended to be exhaustive, but indicative of themes and issues CVEP is actively tracking. This section will grow from an initial base of newspapers, magazines and blog sources, and is segregated from Journal Watch above which scans the peer-reviewed journal ecology.

We acknowledge the Western/Northern bias in this initial selection of titles and invite suggestions for expanded coverage. We are conservative in our outlook in adding news sources which largely report on primary content we are already covering above. Many electronic media sources have tiered, fee-based subscription models for access. We will provide full-text where content is published without restriction, but most publications require registration and some subscription level.

The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/
Accessed 14 February 2015

Vaccines Are Profitable, So What?
Bourree Lam Feb 10 2015, 7:50 AM ET
Yes, Big Pharma is making money from immunizations. But that doesn’t mean anyone should skip the shots.
…So while the vaccine industry is likely more profitable now than in the 1970s or 1980s, this is the result of global market forces, not a reason to skip a child’s vaccinations: Pharmaceutical companies need incentives to keep producing vaccines, because regardless of profits the economic and social benefits of vaccination are huge—in lives and the billions of dollars saved. A study released last year estimated that fully immunizing babies resulted in $10 saved for every dollar spent, about $69 billion total. “Vaccines are one of the most cost-effective interventions we have,” says Halsey.

In the U.S., a study looking at the benefits of vaccination between 1994 and 2013 estimated a net savings of $295 billion in direct costs and $1.38 trillion in total societal costs. Looking at the last 50 years of the vaccine market, it’s absurd to think profits could have ever been the sole motivation of vaccine production. In fact, 83 percent of Americans believe that the MMR vaccine is safe. Profits from vaccine production aren’t a valid argument against vaccinations—the most important question is whether vaccines are safe and effective, and the answer is unambiguously yes.

Why Is Germany So Calm About Its Measles Outbreak?
A bigger flare-up of the contagious disease has a different cause—and has prompted a much more placid reaction.
Adam Chandler Feb 9 2015, 5:28 PM E

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Foreign Affairs
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/
Accessed 14 February 2015

Good Thing Chris Christie Isn’t the Governor of Congo
Poor countries from India to Zambia are making huge gains against preventable killers like measles — just as rich countries are falling behind.
By Laurie Garrett February 9, 2015
…If the backlash against non-vaccinators continues to grow, Christie (and others like fellow presidential candidates Ben Carson, who insists illegal immigrants are responsible for measles, and Rand Paul, who has struggled to balance his libertarian views of free choice against support for public health) may realize they have made the wrong political gamble in playing with public health. A deep, emotional polarization already divides public health advocates and those who dream of global measles eradication versus parental-choice promoters who feel even scant hypothetical vaccine risks are too much burden for their babies to bear. This vaccine polarization has been vociferous and often angry for many years. It would be tragic not only for the children of America, but for the measles-fighting world as a whole, if efforts to achieve American herd immunity against the virus were stymied by U.S. political polarization. Measles infects both Democrats and Republicans, and the vaccine protects the children of conservatives and of liberals equally well…

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The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
Accessed 14 February 2015

Don’t Politicize Vaccinations
6 February 2015
by Rosalynn Carter (former First Lady)
For more than four decades, I have joined with many others working to ensure the timely vaccination of children, and today I am saddened to see an outbreak of measles infecting more than 100 people in 14 states, many of them vulnerable infants. Our country has achieved the highest immunization rates in history and thankfully the vast majority of parents are choosing to vaccinate their children on time. Yet, some parents today are being swayed by misinformation that has caused them to delay or decline vaccinating their children, jeopardizing the health of many others. I want all people to know that immunizations are safe, and that they work…

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Los Angeles Times
The measles outbreaks that matter the most aren’t happening here
10 February 2015
By Andrea Gay
The measles outbreak linked to Disneyland has heightened public debate about the effect of anti-vaccination sentiment, and what can be characterized as a luxury of choice in the United States. Understandably, much of the dialogue is focused on whether to vaccinate kids. It’s critical to address these issues so we can dispel myths about immunization and reemphasize the important benefits of vaccines. But there is another conversation that we’re not having, one that is equally important to making sure measles outbreaks don’t happen in the United States: how to stop measles outside our borders….

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New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/
Accessed 14 February 2015

Comment February 16, 2015 Issue
Not Immune
By Margaret Talbot
Twenty-five years ago, when a doctor named Robert Ross was the deputy health commissioner of Philadelphia, a measles epidemic swept the country. Until this year’s outbreak, which started at Disneyland and has so far sickened more than a hundred people, the 1989-91 epidemic was the most alarming that the United States had seen since 1963, when the measles vaccine was introduced. Nationwide, there were more than fifty-five thousand cases and eleven thousand hospitalizations; a hundred and twenty-three people died. Most of those infected were unimmunized babies and toddlers, predominantly poor and minority kids living in cities…

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New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
Accessed 14 February 2015

Africa
Red Cross Faces Attacks at Ebola Victims’ Funerals
By PAM BELLUCK
FEB. 12, 2015
Red Cross volunteers helping to safely bury people who die of Ebola in Guinea have been attacked in recent days by people attending the funerals, complicating efforts to stop the spread of the disease.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies reported Thursday that since March, the organization’s burial teams in Guinea have been attacked verbally or physically 10 times a month on average. Most recently, on Sunday in Forécariah, two volunteers were beaten as they tried to carry out a safe burial…

The Opinion Pages | Editorial
Reform After the Ebola Debacle
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
FEB. 10, 2015
The World Health Organization’s anemic performance in handling the Ebola outbreaks in West Africa may yield one positive outcome: sweeping, and long overdue, institutional reforms to improve its ability to respond more quickly to the next outbreak of a lethal infectious disease. Scrambling to answer growing criticism, the W.H.O.’s executive board recently endorsed changes to enhance the agency’s rapid response capabilities.

The reforms call for well-trained public health workers to rush to the aid of beleaguered countries and an emergency fund to support their initial operations, among other advances. One big question, which can only be answered in practice, is whether the organization’s 194 member states will set aside their typical politicking on behalf of national self-interests and allow it to function as the global health leader it ought to be.

As of Feb. 6, Ebola had infected more than 22,000 people and killed more than 9,000 of them, mostly in the three West African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, with a smattering of cases in other countries. The number of new cases of Ebola had been falling steadily in those three countries but recently ticked back up for the first time this year in all three, according to the W.H.O.’s latest weekly report. There were 124 new confirmed cases, up from 99 the week before.

That could be a momentary statistical aberration or a harbinger of worse to come as the rainy season makes it increasingly difficult to reach remote areas where the virus may still be lurking.

The agency’s lapses in confronting the Ebola outbreaks have been blamed, rightly, on poor leadership at its headquarters in Geneva and its regional office in Africa. Dr. Margaret Chan, the director general and a Hong Kong pediatrician who got her job thanks to pressure from the Chinese government, failed to respond quickly when Ebola first emerged in West Africa.

Only after a nongovernmental organization, Doctors Without Borders, repeatedly warned that the epidemic was out of control and the virus had spread to the populous neighboring country of Nigeria did Dr. Chan finally declare the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.

The agency’s regional office in Africa was also slow to respond, partly because it was staffed by politically appointed people of little competence and partly because it feared that declaring a widespread emergency would tarnish the reputation and international trade of afflicted countries.

The resolution adopted by the W.H.O.’s executive board signals a heightened willingness to be more aggressive and could go a long way toward addressing these deficiencies. It calls for the agency to create a global cadre of public health workers trained to deal with a crisis, to establish a $100 million emergency fund that could be tapped quickly without waiting for donations from advanced nations to come dribbling in, and a commitment by the executive-director to ensure that regional staff members are selected for their expertise. The proposals are expected to be approved by the agency’s governing body, the World Health Assembly, in May.

In another promising sign of change, a highly regarded physician from Botswana was appointed last month as the new regional director for Africa. She promised to introduce competency tests for the staff and audits of job performance by outside consultants, among other changes.

But the long-term issue of adequate financing for the W.H.O. will remain. Budget cuts reduced the agency’s ability to monitor outbreaks even before Ebola arrived in West Africa. And the agency has not been given power to demand actions it thinks member nations should perform. With the epidemic appearing to ebb in West Africa, the danger remains that the drive for reform could lose steam as well

.The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor
What Would Jesus Do About Measles?
By PAUL A. OFFIT
FEB. 10, 2015
PHILADELPHIA — MEASLES is back. Last year, about 650 cases were reported in the United States — the largest outbreak in almost 20 years. This year, more than a hundred have already been reported.
Parents have chosen not to vaccinate their children because they can; 19 states have philosophical exemptions to vaccination, and 47 have religious exemptions. The other reason is that parents are not scared of the disease. But I’m scared. I lived through the 1991 Philadelphia measles epidemic….
…In the wake of the current epidemic, several states have proposed legislation modifying or eliminating philosophical exemptions to vaccination. No lawmaker, however, dares to touch religious exemptions. It’s political dynamite. But with an estimated 30,000 children in the United States unvaccinated for religious reasons, that is a dangerous mistake.
Parents shouldn’t be allowed to martyr their children — or in this case, those with whom their children have come in contact. Religious exemptions to vaccination are a contradiction in terms. In the good name of all religions, they should be eliminated.

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Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/home-page?_wsjregion=na,us&_homepage=/home/us
Accessed 14 February 2015

Measles Vaccine Debate Hits Home at California School
The measles outbreak and debate over vaccinations has hit close to home at Julian Charter School in California, where many parents have opted out of getting their children immunized.
02/11/15

Dan Henninger: Vaccines and Politicized Science
Jenny McCarthy knows the credibility of science is a house of cards.
02/11/15

U.S. Measles Cases for 2015 Rise 18.6% Over Past Week
The number of measles cases in the U.S. this year rose 18.6% over the past week, to 121 people in 17 states, federal health officials says.
02/09/15

Vaccines: Delays, Too, Pose Risks
While parents who don’t vaccinate their children have been the focus of the recent measles outbreak, experts say vaccine delayers compose a larger and growing group that may expose the most vulnerable population to vaccine-preventable diseases.
02/09/15

Doctors Work to Ease Vaccine Fears
Pediatricians face growing numbers of parents who question or reject vaccinations for their children. Now, public health experts are working on new ways to help these doctors hone their pitches to families.
02/09/15

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Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Accessed 14 February 2015

12 February 2015
The polio vaccine killed my father. But that’s not a reason to oppose vaccines.
Individual risk is a necessary part of public health.
By Nuria Sheehan
My father was one in 5 million. That’s the probability of getting polio after being in contact with someone who has received the oral polio vaccine. I got the vaccine as an infant. And somehow the weakened form of the virus within it managed to infect my father. He spent nine months in intensive care, eventually becoming entirely paralyzed except for one eyelid with which he agonizingly communicated with my mother. A year after I was born, he was dead….