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.

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Brookings
http://www.brookings.edu/
Accessed 19 September 2015
Implementing the post-2015 agenda and setting the narrative for the future
Colin I. Bradford | September 14, 2015 14 September 2015
2015 is a pivotal year for global development; this fall is a pivotal moment. Meetings this fall will determine the global vision for sustainable development for 2030.
Three papers being released today—“Action implications focusing now on implementation of the post-2015 agenda,” “Systemic sustainability as the strategic imperative for the post-2015 agenda,” and “Political decisions and institutional innovations required for systemic transformations envisioned in the post-2015 sustainable development agenda”—set out some foundational ideas and specific proposals for political decisions and institutional innovations, which focus now on the implementation of the new global vision for 2030. This blog summarizes the key points in the three papers…

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The Economist
http://www.economist.com/
Accessed 19 September 2015
The Sustainable Development Goals: Beyond handouts
19 September 2015
Targets intended to shape development for the next 15 years are bloated. All the same, they show how aid is changing for the better.

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Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/hme/uk
Accessed 19 September 2015
Experts divided over value of UN sustainable development goals
15 September 2015
Andrew Jack
…These sustainable development goals (SDGs) sound bold, perhaps even naively idealistic, but there is a precedent: the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) ratified by their predecessors at the start of the century, which spanned poverty, hunger, education, health and the environment. Since then, radical changes in thinking, evolutions within countries and political shifts in governance have overhauled the process of selecting — and the underlying substance — of the international agenda. Yet experts remain divided on the value of the MDGs in the past, and whether the SDGs will have any greater impact in the future…

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New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
Accessed 19 September 2015
Vaccine Issue Arises at Republican Debate, to Doctors’ Dismay
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and CATHERINE SAINT LOUIS
SEPT. 17, 2015
…“I think it’s sad,” said Dr. Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University, who said he cringed through the autism exchange at the end of the debate. “I would have hoped, since two of the discussants were physicians, that there would have been a ringing discussion about safety and value of vaccines, and an affirmation of the schedule set out by the American Academy of Pediatrics.”
For infectious disease doctors around the country watching the exchange, it felt a little bit like “Groundhog Day.” In 2011, during the last election cycle, Michele Bachmann, at the time a leading Republican candidate, called the vaccine to prevent cervical cancer “dangerous,” setting off a controversy that damaged the image of vaccines and set back doctors working to promote them as safe.
This time, it was Donald J. Trump who vigorously asserted a connection between vaccines and autism, telling an emotional story of an employee whose “beautiful” baby fell ill with a fever after having a vaccine and, he said, became autistic. While the two candidates who are doctors — Rand Paul, an ophthalmologist, and Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon — said that childhood vaccines were safe and important, even they shied away from the strict schedule set out by the medical profession.
“We have extremely well-documented proof that there’s no autism associated with vaccination, but it is true that we are probably giving way too many in too short a period of time,” Mr. Carson said. “I think a lot of pediatricians now recognize that and are cutting down on the number and the proximity in which those are done…

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Measles Outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo Kills 400
14 September 2015
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
More than 23,000 people, mostly children, have been infected with measles in the Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. More than 400 have died, according to United Nations agencies and Doctors Without Borders. … The epidemic started in February, but as of early this month, the central government in Kinshasa had not acknowledged that it was underway and deaths were not being officially counted, he said.