Pass laws to help kids live past age 5

As kids in America, our childhoods were quite normal. Our parents made sure that we received all our shots to stay healthy. We had toilets to use and soap to wash our hands. We ate regular, wholesome meals. These were things we took for granted.

We realize now that we were extraordinarily privileged. In many parts of the world, clean water, nutritious food, toilets, soap, and medicine are luxuries. As a result, 1.5 million children die from vaccine preventable diseases each year. Pneumonia is the number one infectious killer of children under the age of five worldwide - more than HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. Diarrhea, an easily treatable condition for most children in Illinois, kills 550,000 children each year in the developing world.

We must do more to help these children. One way we can assist is by passing key pieces of legislation like the Reach Every Mother and Child Act. The REACH Act would greatly improve our government's strategy to ending child and maternal deaths and help kids get vaccinated. It would also restructure our global health programs and better equip us to reach every mother and child with lifesaving help - before it's too late.

Through initiatives like this, we can make sure that we help society's most vulnerable populations and ensure that children worldwide are granted the same opportunities to survive and thrive as our own children in Illinois.

Over the years, we've realized the following: change happens when people speak up and take action. We encourage you to join us and speak out, so that elected officials pass laws like the Reach Every Mother and Child Act and so that we can create a world where every child can live past his or her fifth birthday.

U.S. Rep. Randy Hultgren

Plano

Judith Rowland

U.S. Policy & Advocacy Manager, Global Poverty Project