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Aid and development links: dengue vaccine, refugees and wages probe, jargon and more

Aid and development links: dengue vaccine, refugees and wages probe, jargon and more
Published 11 Jan 2016   Follow @jonathan_pryke

  • The world’s first dengue fever vaccine, which in clinical trials has prevented up to 93% of severe dengue cases in people aged 6-45, is about to be released in Mexico, the Philippines and Brazil. Dengue fever causes about 25,000 deaths around the world annually.
  • The Economist has a piece detailing concerns about the UK’s new aid strategy, which were first brought up by Owen Barder late last year.
  • Vinod Thomas, Director General of the ADB’s independent evaluation unit, discusses five surprising findings from evaluation results in 2015. 
  • A new working paper has shown that the influx of half a million Syrian refugees in Turkey has had no impact on wage rates. The CGD blog has more on the other findings (local prices have slightly gone up in refugee dense areas) from the paper.
  • Larry Elliott, economics editor at The Guardian, argues that with the the refugee crisis worsens the world’s poorest are losing out as more and more donor countries aid budgets are being reallocated to deal with the crisis.
  • Sticking with migration, Feakonomics has an excellent podcast from the end of last year asking whether migration is a basic human right, and what the economic benefits of open migration might look like.


  •  For something a little more light hearted, The Guardian has a primer for how to speak 21st Century aid jargon, which was been taken over by Silicon Valley speak.
  • The 2016 Australasian Aid Conference will be held next month at the Australian National University in Canberra. The Conference is bound to sell out, so make sure you register early.



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