This Thanksgiving, I am grateful for many things, including vaccines.
Vaccines kept my daughters safe and healthy as children and continue to do so now that they are adults. One now works in the service industry and encounters hundreds of people from around the world on a daily basis, making me particularly grateful for the protection vaccines provide.
I’m thankful that family members who have served and are currently serving in the military received the vaccines necessary to stay safe anywhere in the world. I appreciate that others receive vaccines and thus protect my immunocompromised loved ones to whom diseases pose a significant threat.
I feel for the parents of the 25 million children around the world who missed routine immunizations last year, per UNICEF and the World Health Organizatino data. Infectious diseases travel quickly, and I was worried when I heard polio popped back up in the U.S. this summer after nearly a decade without a case.
With polio or any infectious disease, a threat anywhere can become a threat everywhere, which is why I ask Nevada’s congressional delegation, to fully fund global vaccination programs. Doing so helps children everywhere grow up healthy and also keeps us safe here at home.
Those are reasons to be thankful.