Tommy Thompson's cure for what ails the world
Tommy Thompson's failed run for the Republican presidential nomination earned the former governor of Wisconsin plenty of hits. And it was no great surprise when Thompson folded his campaign a year ago.
But the discourse was diminished when Thompson dropped out of the running. Alone among the major contenders for the presidency, he was making a big deal about the potential of "medical diplomacy" -- the use of public health initiatives to address social and economic challenges in the world's poorest countries while at the same time reducing threats to the United States.
Thompson, the former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, may not be running for president anymore. But he is still working to make an issue of the need for the U.S. to engage in global medical diplomacy. Working with the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases and the Gates Foundation, Thompson has taken the lead in highlighting the recent G-8 summit's call to raise awareness of the devastation that disabling, disfiguring and deadly NTDs cause for more than 1 billion of the world's poorest and most isolated people.
The Global Network's message is an essential one: "Fighting NTDs is an issue that our next president and new Congress will need to address, particularly with a recent analysis showing that similar diseases are impacting hundreds of thousands of people living in poverty in the U.S. Moreover, recognizing that poverty is a primary driver of political instability, war and terrorism, addressing NTDs must be a key part of our foreign policy objective."
Tommy Thompson won't be the next president.
But the men who would assume that role, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, should listen to the former governor of Wisconsin, who has made himself a leader in the fight for a world where these diseases and the pathologies that extend from them are addressed.
To learn more about the Global Network and Thompson's work with it, visit: globalnetwork.org
Michelle Stocker/Capital Times
Tommy Thompson is now fighting against neglected tropical diseases.
