Dear Santa Monica Mirror:
All children deserve the opportunity to attend school without the need to worry about health consequences. The article “Vaccination Law Begins Showing Results” on August 14th emphasized the positive impact vaccines are having on the health of children in California. The increase in vaccinated children has minimized chances for outbreaks and for them to escalate to epidemic proportions. It has enabled children to attend school and thrive throughout the school year. This opportunity, however, is not available throughout many parts of the world. Around 16,000 children die everyday from preventable causes due to lack of access to these same vaccinations.
This year, Congress will re-introduce bipartisan legislation (the Reach
Act) with the vision of ending preventable maternal and child deaths in this generation. The legislation will hold USAID accountable to its
promises and calls for a coordinated strategy for ending preventable
maternal and child deaths, clear targets that focus on the hardest to
reach populations, and the scale up of high-impact, evidence-based
interventions that reduce the leading killers of mothers and children such as immunization. I urge members of congress to cosponsor this legislation so that children around the world have the same opportunity to reach their full potential just as your children do here.
Sincerely,
Safiqa Khimani
