“Laos became the first South East Asian nation to introduce pneumococcal vaccine and began a demonstration project for HPV vaccine at a ceremony in the nation’s capital Vientiane Wednesday,” Xinhua reports. “About 180,000 infants will receive the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) and 13,000 girls will receive the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine over the next year,” the news agency notes (Bi, 10/2). The GAVI Alliance is supporting the vaccination campaigns, VOA News adds. “Vaccination is perhaps the best investment a country can make in their children’s health. Healthy children are able to take the benefit of education, they grow up to be adults, productive adults, so its poverty reduction, its social economic development investment,” GAVI Deputy CEO Helen Evans said, according to the news service (Corben, 10/2).