For a baby with tetanus, any movement – even a smile – can trigger repeated, excruciating convulsions.
Typically contracted when babies are delivered in unsanitary conditions, tetanus is a cruel, painful disease that kills 160 newborns every day. It strikes in poor and remote areas that have limited access to health care.
With the help of UNICEF, we can stop tetanus. An affordable and highly effective vaccine can protect a woman and any babies conceived after she is immunized. And yet, every nine minutes, another baby dies – because his or her mother did not get the tetanus vaccine.
This is World Immunization Week – seven days when individuals and communities come together to spread awareness and promote access to vaccines.
Right now, all over the world, children’s lives are threatened by disasters – floodwaters in Mozambique, hunger and cold in Syrian refugee camps, and the aftermath of a deadly typhoon in the Philippines.
This is when children are most vulnerable, and killer diseases are most devastating. And it is when children most need your help.
Simple vaccines are the best weapon to safeguard children from deadly diseases that can spread like wildfire in emergency situations. But the crises in Syria and elsewhere have severely stretched UNICEF’s resources. Without your help right now – children will be left unprotected.
UNICEF buys enough vaccines to protect more than one third of the world’s children. That’s 2 billion doses purchased every year. Still, one in five children is not protected against killer diseases.
UNICEF has the global presence and know-how to ultimately reach every last child.
For more ways to benefit UNICEF USA’s life-saving vaccines, donate a car or other vehicle to UNICEF USA on Car Donation Wizard.
