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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BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
Accessed 16 April 2016
China to punish hundreds of officials over vaccine scandal
14 April 2016
The Chinese government has promised to punish 357 officials over a scandal involving the illegal sale of vaccines.
State media say 192 criminal cases have been filed. Improperly stored or transported vaccines were allegedly sent to 59 health institutions.
The government has said it will tighten procedures around vaccine-handling.
Anger over the scandal is widespread in China, where the alleged illegal vaccine ring had reportedly been in operation since 2011.
In April 2015 two women were arrested for selling some $88m (£61m) worth of vaccines.
Details were only made public last month, when the authorities issued a call demanding that suppliers come forward to help them trace potential victims.
China’s State Council said 357 officials faced demotion or losing their jobs and that 202 had been detained so far.
Health authorities have also urged people to continue coming forward for vaccinations.

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Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/
Accessed 16 April 2016
Apr 14, 2016
Zika Causes Birth Defects, But How Fast Can A Vaccine Be Developed?
…Public health workers have been struggling to address the threat of Zika since the first microcephaly cases following infection were reported in Brazil last year. Currently, primary preventive approaches are focused on controlling mosquito populations and protecting individuals, using repellent, screened windows and air conditioning. But the best approach, as Dr. Peter Hotez of Texas Children’s Hospital Center discussed in January, would be a vaccine.

Easier said than done. Despite hopes of having a vaccine “within months,” as the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases claims is possible, vaccines typically take years to develop, explained Jay Nelson, PhD, a senior molecular virologist and founder and director of the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute at Oregon Health and Science University. He agreed that a vaccine is the most efficient and effective way to protect people, especially now that the virus appears to have mutated and poses a big threat to pregnant people and developing fetuses. But Zika is about 40% homologous to the dengue virus at the amino acid level, he explained, and a dengue vaccine has taken two decades to develop—and there still is not a highly effective, safe dengue vaccine.
Given the number of groups working on Zika vaccine development, however, it hopefully won’t take 20 years to develop one….

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New Yorker
Accessed 16 April 2016
April 14, 2016
With Summer Coming, Can the Zika Virus Be Contained?
By Joshua Lang
With no vaccine or antiviral treatment available so far, the only way to prevent an outbreak is to fight the virus’s main carrier: the mosquito.

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New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
Accessed 16 April 2016
The Looming Threat of Avian Flu
Last year’s outbreak showed just how difficult it is to protect America’s agricultural system from
devastating diseases. Next time it could be even worse.
April 17, 2016 – By MARYN MCKENNA –

The Opinion Pages | Editorial
On Zika, Congress Is Failing to Do Its Job
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has concluded that the Zika virus causes brain damage in babies born to infected women, which adds to the growing evidence that the virus is a major public health emergency. Yet Republicans in Congress are refusing to appropriate the money needed to respond to this crisis.

A Zika outbreak began last year in Brazil and has spread to other countries. In a paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, C.D.C. researchers say there is enough evidence to determine that the mosquito-borne virus is causing microcephaly, a condition in which babies are born with small heads. Zika has also been linked to neurological disorders in adults.

President Obama asked Congress in February for more than $1.8 billion to fight Zika, but Republican lawmakers refused to act and said the government should use money that had been appropriated for other diseases, like Ebola. They have also made vague promises to provide more funds before the next fiscal year begins in October.

After weeks of fruitless talks with Congress, the administration said last week that it would shift nearly $600 million to anti-Zika efforts from Ebola and other programs. That is not sufficient and could increase the risk of another outbreak of Ebola, which remains a persistent threat. The World Health Organization says there have been new cases of that deadly disease in Liberia and Guinea recently.

The federal government has already been forced to hold back grants for state and local health departments because it needed the money for Zika programs. Congressional inaction is also depriving the fights against malaria and tuberculosis of money.

Lawmakers might be tempted to consider Zika a distant threat, but that is a dangerous misconception. There could be hundreds of thousands of Zika cases in Puerto Rico, with possibly hundreds of babies affected, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. As of Wednesday, 475 people were known to have the virus in American territories, 58 of them pregnant women, according to the C.D.C. A smaller number of cases have been reported in states involving people who contracted the virus while traveling.
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Medical experts say that Zika can spread quickly without warning, in part because most infected people have mild symptoms or none at all. The mosquitoes known to spread Zika are found in 30 states, and experts say places like Florida, Louisiana and Texas are particularly at risk. Public health officials say Zika can also be transmitted by unprotected sex.

Government researchers and pharmaceutical companies are working on a Zika vaccine. Scientists are also perfecting mosquitoes genetically modified to produce offspring that die young, but that approach requires more testing. In addition to research, programs are needed to prevent infections by encouraging people, especially pregnant women and their families, to protect themselves from mosquitoes and to practice safe sex.

Having learned from its slow response to Ebola, the Obama administration is trying to move faster against Zika. But if Congress doesn’t do its job, the public will be put at needless risk.