Is there real outrage over preventable deaths from infectious disease?

The current Tehelka carries a very simplistic piece on encephalitis deaths (for example, “immunoglobulin — a drug that cures encephalitis”) but it’s encouraging to see a spate of media pieces on deaths caused by infectious disease in India. There was a more thoughtful piece after last year’s monsoon season in the Wall Street Journal (reprinted in India). This spate of coverage on encephalitis makes the silence on vaccine-preventable deaths even odder: hundreds of thousands of children could be saved from death and disability caused by diarrhoea and pneumonia (and the meningitis which is a frequent effect) if India would only adopt vaccines that are used throughout much of the rest of the world. This, though, goes unreported.