Reprinted with permission from the ASTMH blog
A Message from Dr. Peter Hotez, President, Sabin Vaccine Institute
Dear ASTMH Members,
I am honored and excited to be your ASTMH president for 2011! The coming year promises to be an especially meaningful one in the area of tropical medicine. Never before have tropical diseases been so appreciated by U.S. federal policymakers as being central and critical for purposes of not only health but also for sustainable poverty reduction in the world’s low- and middle-income countries. The President’s Global Health Initiative now includes a major Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) Program in addition to the President’s Malaria Initiative, with commitments to support tropical disease research and control remaining strong from the NIH and CDC, respectively. Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and other key Department of Defense laboratories, including critical overseas units abroad, also strive to remain global leaders in tropical disease R&D. The U.S. is not immune to poverty – a new piece of legislation, “The Neglected Infections of Impoverished Americans Act of 2010” just passed in the House of Representatives.
The World Health Organization and its regional offices have a new Department of NTDs, WHO-TDR maintains a robust portfolio of activities, and only two weeks ago the WHO launched its first-ever report on NTDs, just as other international agencies, including the World Bank, UNICEF, WFP, among others, reaffirm the importance of tropical diseases in their respective portfolios. In parallel, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, and other private foundations and public private partnerships have maintained their commitment to both malaria and NTDs. We are pleased to note that the major pharmaceutical companies have either increased their donations for essential medicines for NTD control and/or investments in tropical disease R&D. Some of the European governments are launching ambitious initiatives for tropical disease product development, as have some of the emerging market economies such as Brazil and India.
With all of these new activities, it is more important than ever for our Society to continue to serve as the a non-partisan voice and forum where evidence based decision making is the basis for prioritizing how global funds can best serve the needs of those most affected by tropical diseases – the disease endemic countries and “the bottom billion” – the world’s 1.4 billion poorest people who live below the World Bank poverty figure and position the U.S in a leadership role for the rest of the world.
More than a year ago I shared with you that my priorities as ASTMH president would include extending our partnership to our colleagues from all of the disease endemic countries, including sub-Saharan Africa and Asia where most of the tropical disease burdens occur, as well as those in the Latin America and the Caribbean Region. My commitment for this global outreach remains. At the same time I will continue to champion the importance of military medicine not only for its historical legacy in tropical medicine but also because it’s activities make an enormous global public health impact and are essential to the success of the Society’s mission. Finally, we will do everything we can to capture the imagination of this new generation of eager young people who have fallen in love with global health and with the people affected by these diseases. We want them to count on ASTMH as their Society, just as I do.
I want to take this opportunity to thank Sally Finney for her years of outstanding service as executive director of ASTMH and extend a warm welcome to Karen Goraleski, who comes to us as the new executive director “hitting the ground running” from Research!America.
Thank you again for giving me this extraordinary opportunity to serve you. Together with our president-elect, past president, secretary treasurer, and Council, we are thrilled and full of hope for what we, together, can accomplish!
To read the press release of Dr. Hotez’s appointment click here
