Mufflers can generally be found in cars. They stifle the loud, high-pitched sound of a car’s engine so that you hear a more smooth-sounding vroom! vroom!
But (as I’ve discovered) mufflers are not limited to the metal bellies of cars. They also exist in our everyday conversation with the rest of world. Sometimes (and usually because of the distance between us) the messages we hear—or the ones we send—are muffled; they lose their inflection, their sting, their urgency. This is especially true of the silent killer, tetanus. Despite the fact that a combined 158,000 mothers and newborn babies die every year from this preventable disease, very few people hear this message in all its severity. Instead, tetanus treads lightly and it continues to retain its title as a silent killer.
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| © UNICEF/2008/Shehzad Noorani |
| Young girls wait at an EPI outreach receive tetanus (TT) shots in Lelan village of Fatikchori Upazila, Chittagong District. Bangladesh. |
But I’m happy to say that since I started interning at U.S. Fund for UNICEF, I’ve found no mufflers here—no silent treading. This organization has been working overtime to sound the alarm on killers like tetanus. Consider that, since it began its campaign to eliminate this disease from developing countries, UNICEF—with the help of its donors and partners—has protected more than 81 million women and newborns in some of the most remote areas in the world. It has helped eliminate tetanus from 12 of the 58 countries where the disease was a threat to the lives of mothers and children. And most recently, BD (www.bd.com)—a leading global medical technology company—renewed its partnership with UNICEF to immunize mothers and children against tetanus. This means we can look forward to saving more lives, and bring the number of preventable deaths from 25,000 a day to zero!
So, want to get rid of your cumbersome mufflers? Want to hear the facts—loud and clear—about tetanus and how you can help eliminate the threat of this disease to mothers and children around the world? Visit UNICEF USA to learn more about the work UNICEF does to save lives.
And I don’t mean to say this eerily, but be aware of mufflers. Because in the case of loud, obnoxious engines (like that of my uncle’s very old, heavy truck), mufflers can be very useful. But they are not so great when it comes to silent killers like tetanus.
