Council on Foreign Relations releases interactive map tracking vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks

The Council on Foreign Relations' Global Health program "has released a user-friendly interactive map on the web that tracks 'Vaccine-Preventable Disease Outbreaks' around the world," Stewart Patrick, senior fellow and director of the council's Program on International Institutions and Global Governance, writes on the group's website. The council's Laurie Garrett and colleagues for the past three years "have been collecting and plotting global data on the incidence of several common infectious diseases that should be headed for extinction, given their vulnerability to inexpensive and effective vaccines," Patrick writes, adding, "The five most prevalent are measles, mumps, whooping cough, polio, and rubella. The entire database -- to which experts and journalists are invited to contribute -- is searchable by disease, region, and year" (10/25).