Morning Briefing

"Eradicating polio and improving the health of millions of children in Pakistan depend quite heavily on assuring that all children have access to life-saving vaccines," but "[t]he most recent policy prescription from the Pakistani parliament to improve immunization coverage, however, misses the mark, and badly," Orin Levine, executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center, writes in this Huffington Post "World" blog post. "A draft bill being finalized in the Pakistani parliament would require compulsory vaccination of all children, and would introduce tough penalties -- including fines and imprisonment -- for parents of unvaccinated children," Levine says. However, supply issues may prevent some parents from being able to vaccinate children, and the threat of punishment may force some to falsify immunization records, he notes.