Health shopping list for Obama
Barack Obama could use health as a "symbolic uniting force"
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Friday, 14, Nov 2008 12:01
Improving global health could become a "symbolic uniting force" for Barack Obama's new administration, the Lancet journal believes.
An editorial in today's issue warns that Mr Obama, who will be inaugurated to the US presidency on January 20th next year, carries "huge responsibility" given the high levels of expectations placed upon him.
It calls on him to boost the global health community by injecting new funding into the World Health Organisation and adding "health equity and human security" to the US' stated foreign policy.
Personnel choices for who will be the US' ambassador to the UN and who will head the president's emergency Aids plan will also be critical, the Lancet says.
And it adds that scrapping the ban on support for abortion as a method of family planning for all those who receive federal funding will "improve women's access to sexual and reproductive health at a stroke".
Mr Obama is also requested to commit spending 0.7 per cent of gross national income on aid by 2015 and ratify the UN's convention on the rights of a child.
"President-elect Obama is a reminder about what is great about the US and that, indeed, 'change can happen'," the editorial concludes.
"The fruits of that change will be judged by tangible improvements to the welfare and health of Americans—and those affected by American foreign policy."