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Archive for August, 2009

Remembering Senator Edward M. Kennedy

Friday, August 28th, 2009

We join the community and the nation in mourning the loss of Senator Edward Kennedy this week. He truly was a great legislator and champion for the little guy.

He and his staff were everything that the remembrances of the past few days claim.  See http://www.tedkennedy.org/tributes for the thoughts of dignitaries and residents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

My own experiences with Senator Kennedy were professional and personal:

  • uncommon responsiveness and help with the Immigration & Naturalization Service to obtain the paperwork needed to adopt our daughter in 1994,
  • Senator Kennedy’s tremendous personal time, money and thoughtfulness for the nursing care he received in 1964 at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in the four years I served as director of community relations and development, and
  • delivering on his word in helping shepherd through the Pediatric AIDS Grant to the Boston VNA in 1988 when the Reagan Administration was still resisting the need to acknowledge, protect and invest in care and research for HIV.

Senator Kennedy was an imperfect man in many ways, a but a tremendous person and special public servant.

He personally contributed to my professional success, to helping my family have the blessing of our daughter, Joanna, and to teaching me the lesson of the importance of remembering those who showed care and kindness.

We’ll miss Senator Kennedy and the many things he did for those in need.

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Impressive Results in Eliminating Maternal & Neonatal Tetanus

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

One of the great privileges I’ve had in the past 25 years was working with the dedicated people at Unicef, the US Fund for Unicef, Becton Dickinson (BD), the Gates Foundation and others to establish systems, forge partnerships and assemble resources necessary to end one of the most terrible killers of newborns and their mothers - Maternal & Neonatal Tetanus or MNT.

It is thrilling to report that MNT has been proven to be eliminated in 14 of 57 countries and five states in India. Dr. Francois Gasse reports in August 2009 that WHO is validating elimination in an additional 12 countries and five more state in India. In ten years, roughly half the countries in the world will no longer have to say that MNT is killer of newborns and/or their mothers if they keep up their immunization efforts. A new partnership with Pampers helps keep the project moving forward.

Led by Dr. Francois Gasse who was brought to Unicef from WHO by Chip Lyons of the US Fund for Unicef  in 1998, the challenge was to eliminate the infection as a public health problem by immunizing women of child bearing age with the cheap, readily available Tetanus vaccine. The spread of Hepatitis and HIV from injections, tremendous cultural resistance to immunizing women, misinformation and little to no public health infrastructure stood in the way.

Dr. Gasse and his small staff, leadership from BD who donated funds and auto-destruct syringes, Chip Lyons and Dianne Whitty from the US Fund for Unicef and funders including the Gates Foundation, Ronald McDonald Charities, ZontaInternational, other Committees of Unicef and others overcame great odds.  People at all levels of the partnership did critically important work - Michelle Chiola Petronio at DCA, Charlie Adams, Meg Gardinier  and Jim Coney at the US Fund, Dr. Zeil Rosenberg at BD and Katherine Winter at Unicef all did so much.

They deserve to be recognized and celebrated.

Francois reports this week that 60,000 deaths still occur every year from this wholly preventable infection and $63 million is needed to keep the effort going and get the job done.

Congratulations to everyone involved in the great success of the MNT campaign and thank you for the honor to have played an instrumental role from 1999 to 2002 in setting the program in motion that has saved so many lives.

- Brad Bauler

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Let’s Change The Frame On Health Reform

Sunday, August 16th, 2009

The disappointing debate about “health care” reform in the summer of 2009 is not about reforming “care” at all - it is about reforming reimbursement - by whom and for what services. The media and everyone involved, including President Obama, continue to talk about things that inflame the discussion, not the core problem.

President Obama speaking about surgeons amputating feet and “pulling the plug on Grandma,” former Governor Palin talking about “Death Panels” and all the rhetoric about nationalizing health care is not what this is about.

It is about a public option for non-insured and small business to health insurance.  President Obama’s personal physician advocates making Medicare available at affordable rates to anyone who wants to opt for that plan.   The reimbursement and approval system is in place, physicians, hospitals, therapists and home health providers have billing systems in place to get paid, and like Massachusetts, it could be offered at a fraction of the price of private insurance.

Medicare is far from perfect - especially the oddly crafted prescription drug benefit.  But it works for seniors and the disabled - something they and AARP fight to preserve every time a change is proposed.

The frame of the debate needs to change to a discussion of a public health insurance option for those that want a cheaper, comprehensive plan. The major dogs in the fight would be the health insurance companies, PPOs and HMOs versus the federal government. The health insurance companies, PPOs and HMOs shouldn’t care all that much since they are doing nothing to provide affordable, comprehensive care for the 45 million Americans without health insurance.

The Massachusetts example is a success on many levels - especially the mandatory nature of it and the rates of enrollment. A public health insurance option is do-able and that is what the conversation should be about.

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Gaucher Initiative at 10: Steadfast in Spite of Controversy

Sunday, August 9th, 2009

It was thrilling to learn from Jack Blanks recently that the Gaucher Initiative lives on 10 years after we brokered the deal that created the partnership between Project Hope and Genzyme.  Genzyme CEO Henri Termeer and Gaucher Initiative manager Tomye Tierney and the dedicated physicians who choose to devote their careers to rare disorders deserve credit and recognition.

Genzyme has long been questioned for the cost of Cerezyme and pilloried for starting patients on treatments with no funding in place to sustain care. It’s been questioned for asking governments to pay for care for a few residents at costs out of proportion with public health needs.

These are very complex issues. Who decides to deny a person - child or adult - treatment for a life-threatening illness? What ethical responsibility do we have to provide treatment? How do you sustain and deliver shareholder value for a business whose mission is to discover, manufacture, sell and distribute life saving therapies? If not Genzyme, then who?

Genzyme’s choice was to confront these questions. Genzyme’s choice was to find a way to deliver care, train practitioners, build markets and keep searching for treatments for rare disorders while big pharma seeks products with huge markets.  This is not to criticize big pharma’s business model - they are fundamentally in a different business.  Where reasonable, they often step up as we see with Merck and Mectizan and with the HIV drugs for which the Clinton folks negotiate.

Congratulations to Genzyme, Project Hope and the experts running the program on ten years.

For more, see: http://harvardbusiness.org/product/genzyme-s-gaucher-initiative-henri-termeer-and-tomye-tierney-video/an/303809-VID-ENG

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