Obama Administration

GlobalPost: Obama’s Global Health Initiative shuns abortion services

The online international news organization GlobalPost has been taking an in-depth look at the Obama Administration’s Global Health Initiative (GHI) as part of its new endeavor, Global Pulse.

Managed and sometimes written by John Donnelly, one of the best global health journalists out there, I dare say the Global Pulse series is probably the most comprehensive, on-the-ground look at what the Administration is doing to fight disease in the developing world.

Here’s one of the their latest posts, by Hanna Ingber Win entitled GHI’s Missing Piece in Nepal, about the problems caused by the ongoing prohibition of U.S. foreign aid funding of abortion services.

Hanna Ingber Win, Global Post

Win opens her post:

LAMAHI, Nepal – United States President Barack Obama set up the Global Health Initiative to take a more comprehensive approach to improving health care in developing nations. In particular, his administration has given great weight to saving the lives of women and to supporting countries’ priorities in health care.

But there’s one exception: abortion.

In Nepal, that exclusion is in plain view, and many say the lack of support disregards evidence that safe abortions can save women’s lives. Nearly all experts here — with the notable exception of those employed by the U.S. government — publicly state that the best way to improve maternal health is by offering a wide range of services that includes more awareness about and access to safe abortion.

FILED UNDER: Health, abortion, Global Health Initiative, Global Pulse, maternal health, Nepal, Obama Administration

August 8, 2011 | 11:50 AM | By Larry Johnson

Let’s bring about world peace while Tom Paulson is gone for two weeks

Updated with new information at 6 p.m. August 8th, 2011

Since Tom Paulson is going to be away on vacation for a full two weeks, I thought I would tackle some of the major problems we face today, starting with world peace. That way, when Tom returns he’ll have fewer tasks and can focus on other issues like health, justice, science, etc.

Besides, I think the role of wars on the entire humanosphere needs much more examination.

Some of you may think I’m being a little ambitious. Well, maybe so. Just keep in mind that I’m trying to help out Tom. Besides, if we really put in some real effort, world peace shouldn’t be that hard. It’s what we all want. It’s what every world leader calls for. In fact, since President Obama already has won the Nobel Peace Prize, world peace would be a way to live up to the award, right?

And, the United States, even though it couldn’t qualify for a revolving charge card at Sears right now, is still the world’s one-and-only superpower. With that clout, I would think we could bring about world peace. For the sake of expediency, and brevity of this post, I’ll just say that it does seem we are moving in the right direction. The United States has pledged to pull all troops out of Iraq this year, and we could do the same in Afghanistan by next year, surely. (Let me know if you think there is a problem with my expedient/brevity thinking here.)

Wikimedia Creative Commons photo

Damage after the Israeli bombing of Gaza in 2008.

With Iraq and Afghanistan at peace, where then could the United States turn its tremendous peace-making powers next? I think the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems like a good candidate. Leaders of violent opposition groups in the Middle East, from Iraq to Syria to Lebanon have told me that solving this conflict would go a long way in bringing peace to the entire region.

Some people think that gaining recognition of a Palestinian state by the United Nations will lead to peace. The International Middle East Media Center, developed in collaboration between Palestinian and international journalists to provide independent media coverage of Israel-Palestine, said Monday:

“Palestinian sources reported that President Mahmoud Abbas will be visiting Lebanon in the middle of this month as he accepted an official invitation from the Lebanese president, Michael Suleiman Aoun. Lebanon will be heading the UN security Council in September. The sources added that Abbas will be in Lebanon on August 16th and 17th, and that his visit will focus on the Palestinian UN move this coming September that aims at an international recognition of an independent state in addition to a full membership at the UN and its security council.”

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, foreign aid, foreign policy, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Obama Administration, peace, United Nations

June 10, 2011 | 11:34 AM | By Tom Paulson

Last big push in advance of the vaccine summit, on blogs and British media anyway

UNICEF

A shot at life

On Monday, at a big international conference in London focused on expanding global access to childhood vaccinations, one of the big questions is if the Obama Administration will step up with the U.S. share of the funding.

Nearly two million children in poor countries die annually from mundane vaccine-preventable diseases that children in wealthy nations don’t die from. Vaccines are cheap, compared to most health interventions, and can cheaply save millions of lives. As I said yesterday, this shouldn’t be a hard sell.

Oddly, the hard sell is mostly going on in the blogosphere (see ONE Campaign, for example) and being covered by overseas media.

The American media isn’t paying much attention … sigh.

The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization was launched a decade ago out of Seattle, by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and initially operated by PATH. It remains the single-biggest project the Seattle philanthropy has ever done, and yet has been fairly low-profile.

I wrote about the launch of this project almost exactly a decade ago, when it was just getting started (and when newspapers had money for travel and foreign correspondences).

GAVI has since prevented an estimated 5 million deaths — more than the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, or any global health initiative out there right now. This is pretty much a big fat success story.

Still, hardly anybody knew (or knows) the story. The lack of public recognition didn’t matter so much before, but has turned into a funding problem. So there’s this big media blitz going on in advance of the Monday summit, where governments and donors will be asked to declare what level of support they intend to provide to GAVI.

Here are some further news reports/comments leading up to Monday:

BBC: It’s “make or break” for global vaccines initiative

The Independent: Four-hour meeting on vaccines could save 4 million lives

Orin Levine, Huffington Post: 10 years of vaccine progress in 10 days

Amanda Glassman at the Center for Global Development: Will Obama provide adequate money for vaccines?

FILED UNDER: Health, Gates Foundation, GAVI, Obama Administration, vaccines

May 10, 2011 | 11:06 AM | By Tom Paulson

GlobalPost looks at Obama Admin’s “stumbling” Global Health Initiative

“A slow, stumbling start.”

That’s how John Donnelly, writing in GlobalPost, characterizes the Obama Administration’s Global Health Initiative. The online international news organization has published a short series called “Healing the World” (yeah, kind of corny) that critically examines the initiative.

The U.S. government is, in fact, doing a lot when it comes to global health needs on a number of fronts — most of which were launched under President George Bush.

The Bush Administration’s global health “strategery” led to PEPFAR, a massive effort aimed at helping those with HIV/AIDS in Africa, the President’s Malaria Initiative and we remain the largest donor to multilateral initiatives like the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria.

These are amazingly grand and good things we are doing. But part of the problem with the U.S. approach to global health has been a lack of coordination among these initiatives and the various agencies carrying them out. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, Global Fund, Global Health Initiative, GlobalPost, Hillary, Lois Quam, Obama Administration, Pepfar, Stephen Morrison

May 3, 2011 | 9:50 AM | By Tom Paulson

With Bin Laden’s death, foreign aid to Pakistan under the microscope

Flickr, k-ideas

Now that Osama Bin Laden is dead, many are taking a hard look at the massive U.S. program of foreign aid to Pakistan – about $3 billion a year, half of that to pay them for helping us fight terrorism.

I hope they’ll take a hard look not just at what we’re getting for the money but why we give it.

What exactly are we trying do with what we call foreign aid?

We actually give very little, per capita and compared to most wealthy nations. And we seem to be giving it mostly for political reasons.

When Egypt erupted in popular protest against dictatorship, many Americans (including, apparently some members of Congress!) were surprised to learn that Egypt was the second or third largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid — and that most of that “aid” went to buy military supplies. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, foreign aid, foreign policy, global health, Obama Administration, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan

March 2, 2011 | 10:41 AM | By Tom Paulson

Obama’s new global health czar

Few in the global health community appear to know much about the Obama Administration’s newly appointed chief of the $63 billion Global Health Initiative — which itself remains a bit unclear, but that’s another story.

Lois Quam

Lois Quam is a Minnesota health care executive best known for her work as a businesswoman at UnitedHealthGroup.

Given that the American health care system is the most expensive — and arguably least efficient and equitable in the developed world — Quam’s appointment to head up our nation’s efforts to improve health in the developing world is causing some to scratch their heads.

On Tuesday, as the Kaiser Foundation reports, Quam made her first public statements since accepting the position in January. The Administration also issued a report on its strategy.

Who is Lois Quam?

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Global Health Initiative, Lois Quam, Obama Administration

February 16, 2011 | 10:54 AM | By Tom Paulson

America’s foreign policy skills crumbling, says leading diplomat

“Diplomats without language skills are like soldiers without bullets.”

Ronald E. Neumann

So says Ronald E. Neumann, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy and a man with a long career in foreign service, describing just one symptom of the sorry state of affairs that has resulted from the U.S. government’s long neglect of the country’s diplomatic corps and foreign policy apparatus.

Neumann speaks tonight in Seattle at the University of Washington’s Kane Hall, an event sponsored by the World Affairs Council. His main message, he told me, will be that the U.S. has let its diplomatic talent base and clout crumble for many years and that further cuts will only endanger us — and probably cost us much more in the long run.

In a study done a few years ago by his organization, Neumann and his colleagues found that nearly a third of all diplomats the U.S. had posted overseas lacked the language skills needed to converse in that country.

Imagine a diplomat in Egypt who doesn’t speak Arabic. Hmmm … maybe that explains why the Arab revolt in Egypt and throughout the Middle East blindsided even our political top brass? Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, diplomacy, foreign aid, military, national security, Obama Administration, Wikileaks

February 16, 2011 | 9:34 AM | By Tom Paulson

Foreign aid cuts popular in budget battle, but not much there to cut

USAID

Federal categories of spending, 2010

As President Obama and Congress tussle over how best to cut the federal deficit many are worried about the size of their slice of the federal budget pie.

Cutting foreign aid seems to be a popular idea with many Americans, probably because they believe we spend a lot of money on foreign aid. As the pie chart off to the right there demonstrates, which can be explored in greater depth at USAID’s Foreign Assistance Dashboard, we don’t.

Foreign aid is about one percent of the budget. Continue reading →