Help Save Over 9 Million Children from Dying Unnecessarily This Year

Dear President Obama,

As informed and conscientious American, I agree to serve as a voice for the world's most vulnerable and least visible children. I call upon you to make child survival a Presidential priority.

Every single day, nearly 25,000 children in developing countries die from preventable or easily treatable causes.

All of them are poor. All of them are under age five. They have committed no wrongs. They have simply been born into poor families.

Child survival is also about mothers - newborns whose mothers die of any cause are many times more likely to die than those whose mothers survive. But more half a million mothers die during pregnancy and childbirth.

The technology, expertise and solutions to save the vast majority of these young lives exist right now. So why does it continue to happen year after year? Why should they continue to die of things that cost pennies to prevent or cure, like diarrhea, pneumonia and measles?

These children and women continue to die because they are too poor and too powerless to have a voice on the world's stage. As an American, I believe that a child's value is not measured by the wealth of his or her family or nation. Surviving to age five should not be a privilege reserved for children born into wealthy nations.

I ask my government, at its highest level, to acknowledge that these young lives can be saved, and that failure to do so is no longer acceptable. I request a new Presidential Initiative to Accelerate Child Survival that will scale up the coordinated, high-impact interventions that are proven to save child lives in even the poorest communities. I believe this Initiative should provide the executive leadership and the resources needed to make dramatic improvements in saving the lives of children and mothers worldwide.

Inexpensive and lifesaving solutions already exist. With leadership and focus, ultimately more than 9 million infants and young children can be saved each year. I believe that it is possible to go from 25,000 to zero - zero child lives lost to preventable causes. I want our President to help make it happen.