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For just a few dollars a dose, vaccines save lives and help reduce poverty. Unlike medical treatment, they provide a lifetime of protection from deadly and debilitating disease. They are safe and effective. They cut healthcare and treatment costs, reduce the number of hospital visits, and ensure healthier children, families and communities.

The return on investment in global health is tremendous, and the biggest bang for the buck comes from vaccines. Vaccines are among the most successful and cost-effective health investments in history.

New vaccines are being developed all the time, which could save many more lives and dramatically improve people's health. And this goes beyond the traditional burden of childhood infectious diseases.

Vaccinations absolutely work, and have dramatically decreased rates of childhood diseases.

Childhood vaccines are one of the great triumphs of modern medicine. Indeed, parents whose children are vaccinated no longer have to worry about their child's death or disability from whooping cough, polio, diphtheria, hepatitis, or a host of other infections.

Measles is probably the best argument for why there needs to be global health, and why we have to think about it as a global public good. Because in a sense, measles is the canary in the coal mine for immunization. It is, you know, highly transmissible. The vaccine costs 15 cents, so it's not - you know, shouldn't be an issue in terms of cost.

Investments in immunization yield a rate of return on a par with educating our children - and higher than nearly any other development intervention.

Why do other first world countries give children so many fewer vaccines than we do? Vaccines save lives, but might be harming some children. Is moderation such a terrible idea?

In some areas, immunity has been eroded so much that the child who's not vaccinated is now actually more vulnerable to the complications of infectious diseases.

I think there's no question that vaccines have been absolutely critical in ridding us of the scourge of many diseases - smallpox, polio, etc. So vaccines are an invaluable medication. Like any medication, they also should be - what shall we say? - approved by a regulatory board that people can trust.