Tag Archives: Barack Obama

Obama administration issues ‘Bioeconomy Blueprint’

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The White House today released a National Bioeconomy Blueprint, which it calls “a comprehensive approach to harnessing innovations in biological research to address national challenges in health, food, energy, and the environment”. The blueprint identifies five “strategic imperatives” including investing in research and development, transitioning discoveries to industry, reforming regulations, boosting training, and supporting public–private partnerships.

The blueprint includes a number of initiatives, many of which already exist. A handful of new initiatives announced today, according to GenomeWeb, emphasize translating technologies to industries in areas such as using genomics to catalog biosecurity threats, buying bio-based products at the Department of Agriculture, and making information technology improvements and bolstering staff training at the Food and Drug Administration. The report also says that the new National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and drug maker Eli Lilly will, in May, make a document available that instructs scientists on how to translate their findings into products.

Because most of the blueprint documents programmes that are already happening, The New York Times notes, “it is not clear what concrete changes, if any, will result”. However, it reports, the blueprint could be seen as an encouraging step by the biotechnology industry, which has received relatively little attention from President Barack Obama’s administration compared with other innovation-based industries such as electronics, social media and solar energy.

Global health leader Kim nominated to lead World Bank

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Dartmouth University/Copyright WHO/P.Virot

Doctor, anthropologist and former leader of the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS unit Jim Yong Kim has been nominated by US President Barack Obama to lead the World Bank.

“The leader of the World Bank should have a deep understanding of both the role that development plays in the world, and the importance of creating conditions where assistance is no longer needed. I believe that nobody is more qualified to carry out that mission than Dr. Jim Kim,” Obama said in announcing the nomination today.

Kim is president of Dartmouth College. In the 1990s, he worked with the health-and-human-rights organization Partners in Health to treat multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in Peru. He won a Macarthur Genius Grant in 2003. At the World Health Organization (WHO), whose HIV/AIDS unit he led from 2004–6, Kim launched the “3-by-5” initiative, which aimed to get antiretroviral drugs to 3 million people by 2005. The goal wasn’t met until 2007, but Kim told Nature Medicine in 2008 that the initiative was worthwhile:

“Many analysts have suggested that the momentum that was gained by ‘3 by 5’ really led to the achievement of ‘3 by 7’. Missing by two years is about as well as the WHO has ever done in reaching a global target,” he said. (Read the full Nature Medicine interview here).

Kim was not one of the people widely thought to be in the running for the World Bank post. His nomination has so far drawn mostly positive, but some negative, reviews.

Kim’s background in poor countries and in global health may “partly insulate” him from criticism raised by groups that want to end the tacit agreement by which the United States typically picks the head of World Bank, wrote the New York Times.

One other nominee, Nigerian finance minister and former World Bank Official Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has been put forward, and nominations close this evening, reports the Times, which says that Obama’s nomination makes Kim the front-runner for the post.

Follow Erika on Twitter at @Erika_Check.

 

Planned cuts to US overseas AIDS programme dismay advocates

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US President Barack Obama’s 2013 budget plans include a significant cut to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the administration’s signature global AIDS programme.

The 2013 budget request would cut 13%, or $542.9 million, from PEPFAR, leaving total spending for that programme at $6.4 billion. The request, however, does call for an 57% increase in funding, to $1.65 billion, for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a multilateral aid program, in order to fulfill Obama’s pledge to provide that programme with $4 billion during his term.

The planned cut for PEPFAR stunned global health advocates, who were buoyed late last year when administration officials championed the fight against AIDS. In a speech at the US National Institutes of Health on 8 November, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the administration was committed to scaling up treatment and prevention interventions that have been shown to slow the spread of AIDS. On 1 December, World AIDS Day, Obama said that the United States would aim to treat 6 million HIV-positive people around the world, 2 million more than were expected to be treated under PEPFAR’s previous targets.

Overall, the President’s budget request would cut a total of just over $300 million from global health programmes.

“For those of us treating patients in some of the most affected areas, President Obama’s proposed budget cuts to many global health programs – including programs to fight HIV, TB, and neglected diseases – is deeply disappointing and a far cry from what he has promised,” said Sophie Delaunay, Executive Director, Doctors Without Borders, in a statement. “It defies logic that the U.S. global AIDS program, PEPFAR, could treat 40% more people in 2012 with 10% less funding.”

And Judith Aberg, chair of the HIV Medicine Association, called the PEPFAR cut “draconian,” and would comes at an inopportune time: just a year after a landmark clinical trial showed that early HIV treatment helped slow the spread of the virus.

“The $4 billion commitment to the Global Fund must be maintained but not at the expense of the highly successful PEPFAR programs,” Aberg said in a statment. “Now is not the time to retreat on our investment in either of these lifesaving programs.”

Ambassador Eric Goosby, US Global AIDS Coordinator, defended the budget request in a statement posted on the State Department’s web site. 

“In their remarks in late 2011, President Obama and Secretary Clinton put forward the inspiring vision of an AIDS-free generation,” Goosby said. “With this budget, the United States will keep our commitments, and we will meet our ambitious targets.”