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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New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
Accessed 23 January 2016
Mosquito-Borne Zika Virus Found in 3 New York State Patients
January 23, 2016 – By RICK ROJAS – State health officials said on Friday that three people in New York State, including one from Queens, tested positive for Zika, a mosquito-borne virus that has prompted concern as it has spread rapidly, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean.
All three had traveled to places outside the United States where the virus had been spreading. Besides the person from New York City, the patients were from Nassau and Orange Counties. One person has fully recovered, and the two others are recovering without complications, according to a statement the State Health Department issued on Friday…

In Pakistan, a Final Push to Wipe Out Polio
January 21, 2016 – By BINA SHAH –
…One effort to resolve that problem was the introduction in Punjab last year of a smartphone app on which the region’s 3,700 vaccinators could keep track of their work. Now, instead of going household to household, they go to a center where children have been assembled for vaccination. The vaccinators then send the data via phone to a central office. Using this approach, vaccinators’ attendance rates, which at times had been as low as 21 percent, have risen to 95 percent to 100 percent.

Officials also have analyzed satellite images to target population clusters, and have produced a color-coded map showing where vaccinations have and haven’t reached children in need.
By now, the rates of vaccination with the two types of antigens have risen beyond 70 percent, a critical threshold toward the goal of eradication.

Encouraged by those results, the Punjab government and the World Bank plan to invest in 10,000 more vaccinator smartphones, which will also capture a child’s photo and the mother’s cellphone number, enabling automatic reminders to a mother that a child is due for a vaccine scheduled near home.

The Punjab government is eager to share its technological know-how with the rest of the nation. One target area this year is remote Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
And if Sindh and Baluchistan follow suit, there’s every chance that Pakistan can catch up quickly to the rest of the world. A polio-free Pakistan — and globe — may be coming sooner than you think.

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Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/home-page?_wsjregion=na,us&_homepage=/home/us
Accessed 23 January 2016
Gates Foundation Sees Possible End to Polio Soon
By Khadeeja Safdar, Rebecca Blumenstein
Jan. 22, 2016 1:35 pm ET

World
Health Threats Spur Vaccine Hunt
Ebola and Zika virus have catapulted the threat of infectious-disease epidemics to a top spot at Davos
By Betsy McKay
Updated Jan. 21, 2016 3:35 a.m. ET

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Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Accessed 23 January 2016
As Zika virus spreads, El Salvador asks women not to get pregnant until 2018
Several Latin American countries are urging a pause in having babies.
Joshua Partlow | Foreign | Jan 22, 2016

More pandemics are inevitable, and the U.S. is grossly underprepared
Just as nations invest in military preparedness, a panel says, so should they confront disease.
Editorial Board | Editorial-Opinion | Jan 21, 2016
WHILE IT has not gained much attention in the United States, Brazil has been struck in recent months with an outbreak of Zika virus that has infected hundreds of thousands of people. Most of the time the symptoms are mild and flu-like, but in some cases health officials say the virus has led to birth defects in babies born to women who were infected in pregnancy. The virus is spread by small insects such as mosquitoes or fleas, and there is no known vaccine to prevent infection.

The Zika story might seem easy to dismiss if one is not living in Brazil. Is this just another unpleasant headline about misery far away?

Not quite. In the aftermath of the mishandled and tardy reaction to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in which more than 11,000 people died, an independent and authoritative commission was set up in the United States to look ahead and draw lessons from this and other recent waves of infectious disease. The 17-member Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework for the Future issued its final report on Jan. 13, and the panel’s conclusions are a wake-up call about the threat of pandemic disease that could originate almost anywhere and spread everywhere. Despite all the advances of science, “the global community has massively underestimated the risks that pandemics present to human life and livelihoods,” the group declared. “There are very few risks facing humankind that threaten loss of life on the scale of pandemics.”

The 1918 influenza pandemic killed anywhere from 50 million to 100 million people; in catastrophic mortality events since 1900, only World War II caused more deaths. Since it first appeared, HIV/AIDS has killed more than 35 million. Although the tolls have been far lower, five outbreaks in the past 15 years have been worrying: severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS; two influenza waves, H5N1 and H1N1; Ebola; and Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS.

As the world becomes more globalized with the movement of goods and people, as climate change disrupts the environment, and as pathogens move between humans and animals, cocktails of infectious disease will form, spread and sicken. Already a dozen cases of Zika virus have been reported in the United States, so far only among people who had traveled outside the country. “The threat from infectious diseases is growing,” the panel warns, adding that “the conditions for infectious disease emergence and contagion are more dangerous than ever.” Moreover, “further outbreaks of new, dormant, or even well-known diseases are a certainty.”

The commission insists that pandemic risks must be treated not as distant, unavoidable possibilities but as real national security threats. Just as nations invest in military preparedness, the panel says, so should they confront disease. In fact, this has been long neglected in many places. The panel calls for measures to bolster public health systems in individual countries; creating a rapid-response capability; strengthening the World Health Organization; and funding research and development of new therapies, all for about $4.5 billion a year. That’s the equivalent of three Powerball drawings like the one on the day of the panel’s report.