Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Had lunch at café Milano with Franco Nuschese (Owner of Café Milano) to discuss an issue with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). He would like to bring the health minister to the USA and have me show him around the NIH. Also, he wants me to go to UAE and help them with advice about research programs, i.e. establish an NIH-like system in UAE. Franco knows the Middle east well since he has many contacts there and want to help the country develop their biomedical research enterprise. He will arrange appropriate meetings. Feb 8-9, 2008 – Flew to San Francisco and took “red-eye” back to give the Merle Sande memorial Lecture at the Gladstone Institute at SF General Hospital (Mission Bay Campus). Warner Greene (Director, Gladstone) and Tom Quinn arranged the visit. I gave a lecture of “HIV/AIDS in 2008” and paid tribute to merle. Told some stories about our friendship and experiences on the NY Hospital House Staff together where he was situation in Washington, D.C. re: HIV/AIDS. He was shocked at the numbers – DC is 9X the national average for prevalence; 5% of the entire DC population is infected. Feb. 20-21, 2008 – Went to University of Chicago to deliver interdisciplinary lecture on HIV/AIDS. Had dinner with Megan at Volare restaurant. Went over very well and then flew early on AM of 21 Feb to DC to go directly to the White House for meeting with Dan Price, Gary Edson, Mark Dybul, Patrick Marcham, Paul Brown, Tim Ziemer to discuss malaria, TB, health care workers and other initiative. I am pushing for the tripling of resources ($20 M to $60 M) for TB vaccine research. We had a big week with the POTUS visit to Africa and receiving great praise and affection for the PEPFAR and PMI programs. POTUS announced a $350 M, 5 year program on Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) to include attempt to eradicate in 300 million people in certain African , Asian and Latin American countries – Lymphatic filariasis, Onchocerciasis, Schistosomiasis, trachoma and ground worms (whipworm, hookworm, and roundworm). This is the same program that Gary Edson and I proposed 3 years ago and so our prior work has belatedly come to fruition. Great news!