Yesterday, the SFRC had a hearing called "New directions in global health". In the hearing, both the US government efforts and the efforts by Bill Clinton and Bill Gates were discussed. Chairman Kerry and both witnesses in various statements made the point that these efforts are a key, very valuable part of our foreign policy effort. Here is a link to the SFRC hearing, where the hearing can be viewed and the statements of Clinton, Gates, Kerry and Lugar can be read.
http://foreign.senate.gov/hearings/hearing/20100310_2/CNN's article does an excellent job covering the gist of the hearing. The only quibble I have is that, in speaking of Senator Kerry's opening statement, while Kerry referred to bipartisan Senate response behind the response to AIDS in Africa, even while speaking of bipartisanship, they call it Geroge Bush's emergency AIDS bill - even though the effort started in the Senate with Kerry working with Frist and then the bipartisan SFRC effort to pass this. This though is typical as credit does often go to the President who signed it into law. After speaking of the need for this to be bipartisan, Kerry said:
Kerry also said the Obama administration's proposed global health initiative has identified principles that should guide U.S. thinking on the matter: Looking beyond the "vertical silo" of any one disease; focusing on women and girls, who are at the "center of each family's health"; and empowering other countries to eventually assume full responsibility for their citizens' care. Kerry said the administration is "finalizing" the initiative.
"A strong global public health system is not merely a favor we do for other countries," Kerry said. "It is the right thing to do morally and strategically, and it protects our own citizens."
Bill Clinton said:
"We live in an interdependent world in which we have learned the hard way that no matter how brilliantly our forces perform, we can not kill, jail or occupy all of our adversaries," he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in discussing why the issue of global health should be important to the United States.
Gates said he hoped that Congress will be able to increase the funding for vaccine allocation and for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a financial organization that organizes and distributes resources to fight the diseases.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/10/global.health/Given all the negativity on TV, this is a very nice, important story.
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