Today I Celebrate an Army of Heroes

Giggling girls and brash clanging on the metal gate would call me outside of our home to see who was standing at the entrance to our pink house in Bangalore. More times than once, I would be greeted by the polio volunteers. Typically, two or three very young ladies would ask if there were any children inside. They would document in a notebook, their ages and offer to give the polio drops. Upon leaving, one of the girls would take a large white chalk and write some numbers on the post of the outer wall.

Our little Bonnie experienced these visiting vaccinators from birth to first grade. Each time the polio vaccinators came to our home a rush of adrenaline caused me to cheer them on as I watched them walk down the dirt roads, house to house, banging the gates, to administer the magic immunization that would eradicate Polio in India! Wow! Yes, that is exactly how it feels to be on the recipient end of a great mission. Each time the polio vaccinators visited our home, I was inspired and invigorated because I knew a little bit about where the story began.

Today, that same feeling happened again. Exhilarated and enlivened with hope when I read, in a recent blog post, Gates acknowledges the significant strides made towards wiping out the disease globally —

30 years ago, there were 350,000 cases of polio per year worldwide, while last year, that number dropped to just 21. cnbc

I couldn’t shout out louder and agree more with Bill Gates recognizing:

"The heroes who have made this progress possible are the millions of vaccinators who have gone door to door to immunize more than 2.5 billion children. Thanks to their work, 16 million people who would have been paralyzed are walking today," cnbc

Thank you to the army of vaccinators who made this health history happen.

Thank you to a man and a woman – a married couple – who together believe that the human spirit has unlimited potential to make the world a better place.

It took an army, and it happened by going door to door.