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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The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/
Accessed 9 April 2016
What Zika Researchers Can Learn From the Rubella Outbreak of 1964
The viruses have key similarities that may help scientists respond to a possible epidemic.
Adrienne LaFrance
Apr 6, 2016
…“What we learned about rubella and pregnancy, and how we learned it—we are definitely looking to those lessons as we learn more every day about Zika virus,” said Peggy Honein, who is a leading researcher into birth defects on the Centers for Disease Control’s Zika Response Team…

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Foreign Policy
http://foreignpolicy.com/
Accessed 9 April 2016
White House Shifts Ebola Funds to Try to Stop Spread of Zika
HHS chief says Zika’s arrival in the U.S. is a matter of when, not if.
David Francis | April 6, 2016

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The Guardian
http://www.guardiannews.com/
Accessed 9 April 2016
Pakistan and Afghanistan join forces to wipe out polio
Islamic scholars have been countering the Taliban’s anti-vaccine campaign, accompanying health workers to urge parents to inoculate their children
Ashfaq Yusufzai for IPS, part of the Guardian’s development network
Tuesday 5 April 2016 07.27 EDT
Pakistan and Afghanistan, the two remaining countries where polio is endemic, have joined forces to eradicate polio by vaccinating their children in synchronised campaigns.
The countries – which share a 2,400km porous border – have been bracketed as the major stumbling block in the drive for the global eradication of polio. These countries have been tackling the Taliban’s opposition to the administration of oral polio vaccine (OPV) to children.

Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), along with the adjacent Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), as well as the adjoining Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, have been declared a polio-endemic geographical block by the World Health Organisation.
“We have started synchronised immunisation campaigns in KP, Fata and Afghanistan with a view to ensure vaccination of all children on both sides of the border,” said KP’s health minister, Shahram Tarakai.
“There are about 100,000 children [whose parents] refuse vaccination on both sides of the border. They pose a threat to the polio eradication campaign. Each child should get vaccinated,” he said.
The government has enlisted the support of Islamic scholars to combat refusals against OPV, said KP’s top polio officer, Dr Ayub Roz.

Taliban groups have been campaigning against OPV because they consider it a ploy by the US to render recipients impotent or infertile, and reduce the population of Muslims.
Ayub Roz said scholars have been involved in the vaccination campaigns to dispel the myth that OPV was against Islam and that it affected fertility.

Maulana Samiul Haq, chief of Pakistan’s Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Haqqani in Akora Khattak, has been given the task of countering the Taliban’s anti-vaccine campaign. He said the scholars have been engaged to accompany health workers and urge parents that OPV is important for their kids to safeguard them against disabilities.

“It is the responsibility of the parents to protect their children against diseases and provide them with safe and healthy environments. We have convinced 10,000 parents since January on vaccination of their children,” he said…

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New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
Accessed 9 April 2016
The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor
Zika Is Coming
By PETER J. HOTEZ

APRIL 8, 2016
Houston — IF I were a pregnant woman living on the Gulf Coast or in Florida, in an impoverished neighborhood in a city like Houston, New Orleans, Miami, Biloxi, Miss., or Mobile, Ala., I would be nervous right now. If mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus reach the United States later this spring or summer, these are the major urban areas where the sickness will spread. If we don’t intervene now, we could begin seeing newborns with microcephaly and stunted brain development on the obstetrics wards in one or more of these places.

There are many theories for Zika’s rapid rise, but the most plausible is that the virus mutated from an African to a pandemic strain a decade or more ago and then spread east across the Pacific from Micronesia and French Polynesia, until it struck Brazil. There, it infected more than a million people over the last one to two years. Today, the extremely poor cities of Brazil’s northeastern states make up the epicenter of the epidemic.

There are three reasons that Zika has slammed this particular part of Brazil: the presence of the main mosquito species that carries the virus and transmits it to humans, Aedes aegypti; overcrowding; and extreme poverty.

In crowded places, mosquitoes have lots of access to lots of people. Poor people often live in proximity to garbage, including old tires, plastic containers and drainage ditches filled with stagnant water, where this species of mosquito lives and breeds. And they often have homes with torn screens on their windows. The combination creates ideal conditions for the Zika virus to spread.

The same factors are present in the poorest urban areas of coastal Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, in addition to South Florida, and an area around Tucson. In the Fifth Ward of Houston (a historically African-American neighborhood that was populated by freed slaves after the Civil War), just a few miles from the medical center where I work, there is an astonishing level of extreme poverty. A brief tour reveals water-filled drainage ditches in place of gutters, as well as evidence of dumping — a common practice in which people toss old tires and other garbage into residential areas rather than designated landfill sites — right next to shabby and crumbling housing.

These are also the major areas in the continental United States where Aedes aegypti is found. This mosquito has transmitted viruses such as yellow fever and dengue throughout the Gulf Coast for centuries. Most recently, in 2003, it transmitted an outbreak of dengue here in Houston that was associated with at least two deaths.
It’s only April, but temperatures are hitting the 80s in the afternoons, and Aedes mosquitoes are already here. By May or June we will start seeing those mosquitoes in much larger numbers.

I develop vaccines for neglected tropical diseases. Several Zika vaccines are being created, but none will be ready in time for this year’s epidemic. In place of a vaccine we need a robust program of mosquito control and environmental cleanup in the poorest neighborhoods of our Gulf Coast cities and in Florida. This should include removing garbage and debris, and installing gutters to replace drainage ditches. We need to improve access to contraception, and provide pregnant women with proper window screens for their homes and information about the risk of Zika. Finally, we will need to train teams to visit homes in poor neighborhoods and instruct occupants on how to empty water containers and spray for mosquitoes, just as we are doing now in Puerto Rico.

At the federal level this effort would need to bring in the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But we’ll also need parallel approaches at the state, county and city levels.
This coordination is labor intensive and will not be easy, but if we don’t start working now, by the end of the year, I am afraid we will see microcephaly cases in Houston and elsewhere on the Gulf Coast. This could be a catastrophe to rival Hurricane Katrina or other recent miseries that disproportionately affect the poor. Zika is a potentially devastating health crisis headed for our region, and we might have only a few weeks to stop it before pregnant women become infected.

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Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/home-page?_wsjregion=na,us&_homepage=/home/us
Accessed 9 April 2016
Business
J&J Makes Renewed Push Into Africa
By Betsy McKay, Jonathan D. Rockoff
April 5, 2016 7:03 pm ET

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Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Accessed 9 April 2016
‘It’s everyone’s worst fear’: How a small college survived an outbreak
After students were diagnosed with meningitis, Santa Clara University launched the fastest-ever mobilization of a mass vaccination clinic in the country, according to the county health department
Susan Svrluga | Local | Apr 7, 2016

Here’s why the WHO responded so differently to Zika and Ebola
By Amy S. Patterson April 4