As the rest of Ghana wakes up to a warm, hazy morning, an army approaches by foot from over hills, around corners and down the streets. Ghana Red Cross volunteers dressed in aprons emblazoned with the Red Cross symbol or brown student nursing uniforms, they emerge quietly from the morning darkness. Shaking hands and exchanging friendly greetings, the growing group of volunteers creates a buzz as their numbers swell to more than 250. Vaccinators and volunteers, they’ve gathered to pick up their supplies for the day, break into teams and disperse into the 12 districts of the Volta Region for their second full day of measles vaccinations.

"It is important for young people to protect our younger ones when they are in trouble," said Patience Gaspier, an 18-year-old volunteer with the Ghana Red Cross. "We are helping to create our future. I want to be a nutritionist and generalist when I am older."

Ghana Red Cross volunteers will assist the vaccinators with crowd control, mark children’s pinky fingers with purple dye to indicate they have been vaccinated and keep a record of children they reach. They also carry out social mobilization -- mobilizing and educating mothers about the importance of vaccination is a crucial piece of the campaign puzzle, especially in areas where children do not have access to healthcare or parents do not understand how deadly the disease can be.

"This campaign is very important – once there was a child in my village who suffered from measles and the child died. He had not been vaccinated. I want to help save this innocent child. His parents did not understand the meaning of vaccination – now I want to educate them about it", said Harrison Adigbli, a first-time volunteer and 18-year-old engineering student at Ghana’s PolyTech University.

In order to stamp out measles in Ghana, the massive human resources needed to carry out the ambitious task of vaccinating eight million children in one week is unimaginable. Careful planning and logistics ensure success – 95 percent of children between the ages of nine and 15 must be vaccinated in order to stop transmission of the disease and bring measles cases to zero. Gershon Dzoko, the youth volunteer coordinator for the Ghana Red Cross Society in the Volta Region carefully checks hand-written charts of teams, vaccination posts, and daily target numbers of children. He will disperse 136 volunteers today into communities and schools hunting for left arms and lives to save.

At Avenui Episcopal Presbyterian Primary school, our first vaccination post of the day, a young student bangs a piece of hanging metal with a stick to signify the end of the hour lesson. The children file out of the open-air, dirt floor classrooms to line up under a large shade tree while vaccinators quickly move from child to child giving them the measles "jab." Clucking chickens and their chicks scuttle around the line. When the children get tired of standing on their bare feet, they take turns resting on a tree stump chair.

Teacher Caroline Bansah peeks back at her two-year-old daughter Katheryn. The child is suspended on her mother’s back by a colorful piece of wraparound cloth. "I am a teacher here and have brought my child to be vaccinated," Bansah said. "Measles can kill children. I saw a child once with measles – I had pity for it, it was suffering so much."

Patricia Odame, a 27-year-old nurse said, "The children are mostly cooperating. If one is deviant, we have to run to catch him. They were happy we were doing something for them. Because of education, they know that measles kills and they do not want to die. Everywhere we went, they were clapping for us."

At a crowded market later in the day, we stopped to pick up a quick snack of bananas and to see what a local outdoor market had to offer. As we went from table to table, our Ghana Red Cross leaders followed behind, checking the left pinky finger of every child they saw. "Have you had your shot?" Larry Yeboah would ask. "Let me see your arm, have you gotten your vaccination?" John Atisu would demand. Even in this rural market, every single child had a purple-dotted pinky, and some would roll up their sleeves to show the "jab" mark for extra emphasis.

By the end of the day, we returned to the morning’s distribution center, tired, hot and hungry. The center was empty when we first arrived at 4:30, but slowly throughout the hour, from the distance, you could see the many volunteers and vaccinators trickling back in to turn in their tally sheets, disposal boxes, and refrigerated vaccine carriers. Much like the morning the masses grew, yet this time they had spent a day vaccinating thousands and saving lives. "I had 550, 900, 215…." the different teams would report.

The day before, the same teams vaccinated 19,000 children in Volta Region schools alone. Elikplim Banini, whose name means ‘God is with me’, sat looking exhausted but smiling as she leaned back against enormous cardboard crates of syringes waiting to sign out for the day. "Today my team of 16 saw 3,000 children. I like to save lives and help my country. So no matter how hard the work is, I don’t get tired."