State Department creates new bureau focused on global health security in wake of pandemic
Gabrielle M. Etzel
Video Embed
The State Department is launching the Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy to elevate the issue of global health in U.S. international policy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Health transcends borders, economies, security. Ways of life rise and fall based on health,” Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said at a joint press conference on Tuesday with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
HOUSE DEMOCRATS URGED TO TOUT ECONOMY TO IMPROVE REELECTION CHANCES
Becerra said the American “way of life [is] tied intrinsically to that of everyone else” and that the country’s medical resources and technology “belong to them just as much as they belong to us.”
The creation of the bureau was announced by Blinken in December with the intention of merging several public health, biodefense, and scientific arms of the State Department into one new structure to “allow our health security experts and diplomats to work more effectively together to prevent, detect, and respond to existing and future health threats.”
“We have to be ready, and the world at large has to be ready. That is the central mission of the new bureau,” the secretary of state said.
Blinken also announced on Tuesday that John Nkengasong, the current U.S. global AIDS coordinator and special representative for health diplomacy, would serve as the director of the new bureau.
Nkengasong, who was confirmed by the Senate in May 2022, also oversees the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which was established in 2003 and has saved millions of lives over four presidencies. PEPFAR will now be a program under the purview of the Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy.
At the press conference, Nkengasong called for a “whole-of-government approach” to address rising public health threats due to globalization, climate change, and an increase in the world’s population.
Under his leadership, the new bureau will use the “full force of U.S. diplomacy to advance the concept of the four Cs” of healthcare, which are cooperation, coordination, collaboration, and communication, in terms of working with global partners to address public health concerns that could have a sizable geopolitical impact.
Blinken, Becerra, and Nkengasong addressed various global health challenges in the 21st century that have prompted the growing interest in global health security concerns besides COVID-19, such as Ebola, Zika virus, and HIV/AIDS.
Strengthening outbreak responses and improving global health infrastructure, ranging from testing and monitoring to vaccine and medication distribution and manufacturing, are key goals for Nkengasong. The new bureau head also intends to transition COVID-19 response efforts away from emergency management to a more permanent solution, as well as bolster efforts to achieve the United Nations’s goal of ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Health diplomacy must become “part of the DNA” of the State Department, Nkengasong said.
“A pandemic is not only a health crisis. It’s a security crisis. It’s an economic crisis. It’s a humanitarian crisis,” Blinken said.