BVGH Report, February 2009
In the early hours of the new Administration, President Obama and newly-confirmed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed support for U.S. aid to the developing world. President Obama said in his inaugural address that “we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders.” The new administration seems poised to continue the momentum of the Bush administration’s initiatives in global health. To underscore the bipartisan case for global health, former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson and tropical disease researcher Dr. Peter Hotez of George Washington University advocate for greater U.S. “medical diplomacy” in their recent PLoS NTDs article.
A notable achievement of the Bush Administration was the President’s HIV/AIDS initiative – PEPFAR – that provided $15 billion over five years to deliver antiretroviral treatment to the neediest countries in Africa. Another strong boost for global health came with the establishment of the President’s Malaria Initiative, which provided $1.2 billion for the purchase of malaria medications.
Now, In the January issue of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, Hotez and Thompson make the case that global medical diplomacy should be a centerpiece of America’s efforts to create a safe and stable world. It’s a simple philosophy: there’s no more effective way to win over potential adversaries than by lifting them out of the despair of poverty and ill health.
Hotez and Thompson compile startling data on neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), a group of infections that burden the “bottom billion” of the world’s population who live on less than two dollars a day. NTDs not only proliferate alongside poverty and community destabilization, but are also contributing factors to the emergence of these circumstances. Even when childhood infections are cured, permanent IQ deficits can remain, making it hard for adults to work and improve their lives.
Yet the outlook for the future is positive. Hotez and Thompson show that high-impact, cost-effective treatment of NTDs not only improves the lives of target populations, but is also affordable: curbing major NTDs can cost a mere 50 cents per patient, per year. Moreover, there are clear benefits for the United States. “Seven of the 10 countries that value the U.S. most are from Africa,” Thompson said in a public lecture. “And you know why? It’s [the] PEPFAR program, it’s the Global Fund, it’s medical diplomacy.”
Hotez and Thompson now have additional capital to carry this work forward. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation just announced a $34 million grant to the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, an initiative of the SABIN Vaccine Institute of which Hotez is president. “Our work together to help the world’s poor is more important in the face of this global financial crisis,” said Bill Gates at a news conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “If we lose sight of our long-term priority to expand opportunity for the world’s poor and abandon our commitments and partnerships to reduce inequity, we run the risk of emerging from the current economic downturn in a world with even greater disparities in health and education and fewer opportunities for people to improve their lives.”
