<i>This sort of spending tugs at the heart strings but unfortunately it can actually be quite counter-productive at improving the lives of people in undeveloped regions.</i><p>I could not disagree more strongly regarding vaccinations not being an effective economic development tool.<p>Take the polio vaccination program for instance.  Polio.  Polio doesn't often kill people, but it does often make them lame for the rest of their lives.  So, for every person that gets polio, they are extremely limited in the economic goods that they can produce, but they are also an economic drag on the family, because they are a financial burden rather than producing income.  Polio has been almost eradicated, and the economic benefits to poverty stricken countries has been huge.<p>Small Pox is another example.  It has all been eradicated, life expectancies have gone up in the third world because of it, and more people are able to produce income for longer.<p>Other diseases like Malaria, Cholera, Dengue affect hundreds of millions of people world wide each year, and they aren't necessarily killer diseases.  And, millions and millions of people are affected by these diseased, and when they are infected, they are an economic drain.<p>Preventing these diseases with a simple vaccine is going to give a much greater economic boost to poor countries than giving them clean energy technologies or superhighways.<p><i>Keep in mind that in these countries, with no real legal system, unskilled labor doesn't mean gardening like it does in California but violence in the form of gangs/thug-ocracies who typically control access to natural resources or drug running routes</i><p>That, sir borders on the racist.  What countries are you referring to?  There are well over a hundred developing countries with various levels of legal systems and economies.  Are you saying that all developing nations are thugocracies?  Are you suggesting that any and all unskilled labor in developing nations ends up leading to gangs?