Vaccines Save Lives. Period.
Dear friends of Calcutta Kids,
Kanchan S., a Calcutta Kids beneficiary and mom of three, has had tuberculosis twice. Even with treatment, Kanchan continues to experience health complications from TB.
Thankfully, access to vaccines means that Kanchan’s children can be spared the suffering she’s endured. Through Calcutta Kids, Kanchan has vaccinated all three of her kids to protect them from devastating diseases like TB, polio, measles, rubella, and hepatitis.
Yet somehow, we find ourselves in a world where vaccine skepticism has become mainstream.
So, let’s do a reality check: Over the past 50 years, global immunization efforts have saved an estimated 154 million lives worldwide. Of those lives saved, the majority — about 101 million — were infants.
We’re proud to be part of that legacy. For the past 20 years, Calcutta Kids has been committed to fully immunizing young children in our program at no cost to families.
Each week, Calcutta Kids community health workers use our database to see which children are due for immunizations and call families to invite them to our weekly immunization clinic. At the clinic, our clinical team checks each child, provides counseling about the immunization benefits and potential side effects (when relevant), and administers immunizations.
In 2024, 94% of Calcutta Kids children were fully immunized — a vaccination rate that is, sadly, unique. In India at large, on average only 76% of children are fully immunized. Even though the Indian government provides vaccines, their supply is unreliable. Families often wait hours in government vaccination lines only to be told the vaccines ran out.
That’s why child immunization is at the heart of Calcutta Kids’ work — and now more than ever, we need your help to keep it going.
In 2023, the Indian Academy of Pediatrics added new vaccines to its child immunization schedule. As a result, the cost to fully immunize a child is now 10x what it once was.
While this update aimed to prevent even more diseases, it’s now incredibly costly for organizations like ours to achieve full immunization.
We rely on your contributions to continue our legacy of full immunization.
$150 covers the cost to fully immunize 1 child (from birth to age three).
Thank you so much for your support, which makes it possible for children like Kanchan’s to receive life-saving vaccinations and have healthy, full lives.
With warmest holiday wishes,
Evangeline Ambat & Noah Levinson
Co-Directors, Calcutta Kids