Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s “The Optimist”: The secret journey of an effective vaccine
Caroline Lambert, journalist and former visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development, discusses efforts to address Japanese Encephalitis (JE) in countries in Asia and the Pacific, including the role of PATH in leading vaccination efforts to reduce cases. Lambert writes, “In spite of this success, there is no room for complacency. … Work indeed remains to be done to improve surveillance and better measure the impact of interventions. More granular data will help refine where vaccination is most needed. National authorities facing competing immunization choices have to decide where to roll out the JE vaccine at the subnational level. Better data would also help make the case for JE immunization in countries … where JE is endemic but the vaccine is still not being offered as part of public health programs…” (4/22).