Children in the United States enjoy freedom and safety from vaccine-preventable diseases, and we have the opportunity to extend this safety to children around the world. Some 1.5 million children die each year from a disease that could have been prevented by a vaccine and nearly one-third of deaths among children under five around the world are preventable.

Not that long ago, Sioux City was devastated by polio, a now preventable illness. A 1953 Sioux City Journal article reported that 278 Sioux City residents came down with polio the previous year, and 372 Northwest Iowa residents were struck with polio.

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Funding global vaccine programs is less than 1 percent of the total U.S. budget and would save approximately 2.5 million lives around the world, making it one of the best-bang-for-your-buck programs we could fund. The measles vaccine alone prevented approximately 20.3 million deaths from 2000 to 2015.

Please urge your members of Congress to support funding for global vaccination programs.

There is a long and rather depressing list of problems troubling the world today, most of which don’t have clear or feasible solutions. Preventing children from dying from vaccine-preventable illnesses is not one of these hopeless problems. - Clay Bockelmann, Sergeant Bluff, Iowa