Saving One Life At a Time

To fight an enemy like this, we need an army nimble as a virus, huge as hunger, brave as Marines. In this special report dedicated to global health, you will meet some of these defenders, models of not just charity but also ingenuity, nerve, patience and faith. There is the doctor building clinics in Rwanda, the motorcycle riders carrying medicines across roadless stretches of Uganda, the survivor of the refugee camps fighting TB in Cambodia, the rape victim who speaks out about AIDS to young people in conservative Muslim villages in Nigeria. There are the grandmothers in Nepal with their little bags of vitamin A, fighting infant mortality; the nutritionist in Honduras teaching mothers hygiene and food handling; the backpack medics who slip from Thailand into Myanmar to deliver care village by village, risking arrest if they are found.

Maybe after all we've seen and heard and feared this year, maybe after all we've learned, something will be different this holiday season. Maybe instead of buying Aunt Margaret a sweater, we'll buy a goat in her name from Heifer International to give a hungry family milk every day. Five dollars buys a mosquito net to guard a sleeping child. We'll find a mission. Raise the money. Raise an army. Save a life.