On behalf of 48 kids who have almost nothing, thank you for giving them a much better Shot@Life!

If you have kids, you probably remember the seemingly endless stream of visits to the pediatrician's office for the next round of vaccines in that first year. 

I remember one appointment when my itty bitty twin baby girls each got 3 shots!!

Oh, the fussing, the crying, the squirming - and that was just ME!  Fortunately, daddy had a stronger constitution for these things. Still, I knew we were lucky to suffer through those trips to the doctor.

I'm backing the UN Foundation's new campaign Shot@Life.

The campaign aims to immunize children in developing countries against 4 of the most common and deadly childhood diseases: polio, rotavirus, pneumonia and measles.

I am thankful every single day that my beautiful girls made it through their early childhood safe from diseases that used to cause grave illnesses and deaths not so long ago in the U.S and other developed countries.

Unfortunately, in many developing areas of the world, children and their parents are not so lucky.  Together, polio, measles, pneumonia and rotavirus (which can cause life-threatening diarrhea) are still taking cutting short precious children's lives -

at the rate of 1 child every 20 seconds. 

This is a devastating fact on many levels. Parents lose precious children who didn't get the shot they deserved to reach milestones our children passed through joyfully and safely.

Why immunize kids in developing countries?

A child's death takes a terrible economic toll on families. Some who had made it out of extreme poverty lapse back in because of medical bills they cannot pay.

This economic toll is destabilizing to communities and ultimately nations. As a matter of fact, immunizing children in developing countries is ONE OF THE MOST COST-EFFECTIVE WAYS TO ACHIEVE A MORE PEACEFUL WORLD.

It is also an extremely effective way to help families life themselves out of poverty. Healthy children can go to school and their parents can go to work. It makes a tremendous difference to the wellbeing of the family and their prospects for prosperity.

And in the end, every precious child deserves a shot at a healthy life, don't you think?