Sweet Success

In case you guys haven't noticed, August snuck up on us this week. I was quite shocked when I had to flip my desk calendar. Families are taking their end-of-summer vacations and teachers are enjoying their last few weeks of student-free bliss. Here in Vietnam, I'm operating at full throttle as my final weeks fly by. That's right. There will be one more Derrick in the Hollow in 3 weeks!

Since I moved to Vietnam, I haven't talked much about the work I've been doing, so I'm dedicating this post to our fabulous team working to save newborns from a lifetime of disease, expensive medicines, and complications from hepatitis B.

A lot of people in Southeast Asia are infected with hepatitis B--a virus that can lead to liver disease and death. Vietnam is one of 9 top-priority countries for improving vaccination against the disease. We've been working with the national immunization program and provincial partners in Hai Duong province to vaccinate more newborns to protect them from getting the virus from their mothers during birth. Within only 4 months, PATH and our partners were able to reach more than 8,100 newborns in Hai Duong province with a lifesaving vaccine against hepatitis B. Check out PATH's blog to read more about our project.

It is nice to remember our successes in the face of so many global health challenges. As my time here comes to a close, it is nice to know that in the last 2 years, I was able to help this fabulous team get additional funding to expand our hepatitis B work and share our successes with the world.