A Canadian study has found an association between flu vaccination in pregnancy and improved outcomes for newborn babies.

A team from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia analysed data from over 12,000 women who gave birth between November 2010 and March 2012. 16% of the women (about 1 in every 6) had had the flu vaccine while they were pregnant. The study looked at whether the flu vaccine made any difference to a woman’s chance of giving birth prematurely, or of having a low-birthweight baby.

A recent BBC news report investigated how India appears to have eradicated polio. In 2009 India reported 741 polio cases, more than any other country in the world, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. However, the last reported case was in 2011.

The world’s first malaria vaccine could be approved by 2015, which means it could be used for the first time in 2016. This is a significant breakthrough; malaria is one of the world’s most serious diseases, infecting more than 200 million people every year and killing at least 660,000 people, most of them children.

We recently had the privilege to meet Sam Willis and his family, in order to make another of our series of short films about the impact of infectious diseases. Sam had pneumococcal meningitis when he was 9 months old. In this new short film, his father Matthew describes the lasting effects of the disease, and talks compellingly about the impact of Sam's condition on the whole family. We get an insight into what home - and school - life is like for Sam, who is now 11 years old.