Media/Policy Watch  [to 6 June 2015]
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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Center for Global Development
http://www.cgdev.org/
Accessed 6 June 2015
New Rules for Public Payers and Pharma in Emerging Economies?
6/3/15
Amanda Glassman
This week, emerging economy governments and multinational pharmaceutical executives announced they have agreed to a new way of working together, which should ensure people in those countries get the medicines they need at affordable prices. I’m glad to see this new framework for better priority-setting become a reality. Agreed to in April in Vietnam, it will allow public healthcare payers, the pharma industry and patients benefit from a more transparent process for deciding what drugs are made available to those who rely on strained public health care systems. While I have some questions and reservations about the agreement, at least it begins to address a chronic problem in global public health…

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Forbes
http://www.forbes.com/
Accessed 6 June 2015
Bill Gates, Dr. Paul Farmer And African Tycoon Strive Masiyiwa On Combating Future Epidemics
Billionaire Bill Gates, renowned doctor Paul Farmer and Zimbabwe’s richest man Strive Masiyiwa discussed how to combat future epidemics during the Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy.
Keren Blankfeld, Forbes Staff Jun 05, 2015

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The Guardian
http://www.guardiannews.com/
Accessed 6 June 2015
Children continue to die from vaccine-preventable diseases. We can stop that
Amy Belisle
4 June 2015
An unprecedented outbreak of chicken pox and whooping cough in Maine likely stems from a breakdown of herd immunity

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New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
Accessed 6 June 2015
Movie Review
Review: ‘Every Last Child,’ a Front-Line View of the Polio Crisis in Pakistan
New York Times | 2 June 2015
“Every Last Child,” a compelling documentary by Tom Roberts, gives a street-level view of the polio crisis in Pakistan, where that crippling virus remains endemic. While a program by the World Health Organization goes door to door administering oral vaccinations to infants, Pakistani Taliban militants have killed dozens of health workers since 2012.

The film spends time with an adult victim of polio and with a father whose infant son must be fitted for leg braces. And it follows Gulnaz Sherazi, a health worker who lost her niece and sister-in-law to Taliban attacks but continues to serve. These wrenching stories humanize the stakes of a health initiative that found itself and its employees at risk from a toxic mix of politics, propaganda and terrorism.

Once thought to be on the verge of global eradication, polio continues to threaten pockets of Pakistan: Peshawar in the north and the Waziristan tribal areas, and spreading south to Karachi. And the Pakistan polio strain has turned up in Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria, even China.

The Taliban’s brutal violence stuns Elias Durry, in charge of the W.H.O. program in Pakistan. “It’s a public health campaign,” he says. “It’s not supposed to be a war.” But that’s what the vaccination project has become, with an implacable enemy and a resentful populace…

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Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/home-page?_wsjregion=na,us&_homepage=/home/us
Accessed 6 June 2015
Ebola’s Long Shadow – West Africa Struggles to Rebuild Its Ravaged Health-Care System
By Betsy McKay 5 June 2015

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Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Accessed 6 June 2015
The Post’s View
Cholera’s fresh attack in Haiti
As donor dollars have dried up, the impoverished Caribbean nation faces a surge in the disease.
Editorial Board | Opinions | Jun 4, 2015
By Editorial Board June 4

THE FIGHT against the cholera epidemic in Haiti, by far the world’s worst in recent years, has been a hard slog. Still, the number of new cases had fallen precipitously, to just 1,000 per month for much of 2014 from an average in 2011 of nearly 30,000 per month.

But a recent spike — to about 1,000 new cases per week — is a grim reminder of how much is left to do to eradicate an illness that was virtually unknown in Haiti until U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal introduced it in 2010.

The surge in new cases also casts an unflattering spotlight on international donors, whose focus has gradually shifted elsewhere since the deadly 2010 earthquake killed at least 160,000 people .

It’s impossible to know whether flagging contributions reflect donor fatigue or the fact that relatively few cholera victims end up dying (less than 1 percent), thanks to quicker recognition and treatment in many parts of the country. Still, tighter money means longer odds for tackling the disease over the long term.

A plan to eliminate cholera in Haiti by 2022, devised in coordination with the Port-au-Prince government, was pegged to cost $2.2 billion. But of the $1.7 billion sought to execute the first five years of the plan, from 2013 to 2018, only 17 percent — about $286 million — has been raised and spent so far.

That means that blueprints to improve and replace portions of Haiti’s glaringly inadequate water and sanitation infrastructure are not being implemented. In the absence of those upgrades, more Haitians will continue to succumb to cholera, a diarrheal illness caused by consuming contaminated food and water.

Vaccinations have been a major focus of international health organizations combating cholera in Haiti. Yet in a country of more than 10 million people, fewer than 400,000 Haitians have received the cholera vaccine despite the efforts of organizations such as Partners in Health, which has vaccinated thousands of people in rural areas, and a Haitian group called GHESKIO, which has done similar work in the slums of Port-au-Prince. Supplies of the vaccine, which was not in wide demand before the Haitian outbreak, remain limited.

The United Nations has done extensive and admirable work in Haiti, including on public health, but it maintains it is immune from legal liability for the cholera epidemic. This is despite the consensus of health experts that U.N. peacekeepers introduced the disease into the country. In January, a federal judge in New York sided with the United Nations .
Nonetheless, it has a moral obligation to do more, including pressing donors to fund the plan to eradicate the disease. There is no mystery about how cholera is transmitted or about the means to eradicate it. Only money is lacking.