Here in our country in the last year for which we have the statistics, in 1990, only 39 percent of inner-city children in our country were immunized against measles. And those who have been successful in getting the message through have learned how to get the message across, how to get in under the radar of indifference and neglect, and all of the other barriers to immunization. In Mali, for example, infant mortality rates are among the highest in the world, over two-thirds of childhood deaths could be prevented by vaccination. Well, the University of Rochester is currently working in partnership with the Columbia University in Mali to improve child immunization levels among the poor urban populations. It's time we brought some of those lessons home to places within our own nation where the statistics clearly tell us that we can apply some of those lessons.
Dehydration kills three million children every year.
The numbers are very different here but in our country it kills up to 600 children every year and hospitalizes thousands. As many of you know, one of the great heartwarming success stories in recent years has come with AID's discovery that feeding children a mixture of water, sugar and salt prevents diarrhea from causing dehydration. And the treatment just costs pennies a day, now saving more than a million lives a year. Again, something that was devised originally for nations elsewhere in the world can help here if we will look carefully at exactly where those 600 children in the United States are who die of dehydration each year. They pre-test, package and promote the materials and launch the products just like a business would.