I guess that they expected more from Barack, when it comes to insidious microbes and battling them. But in all fairness, he’s got a lot on his plate, even when it just comes to health.  He may be looking more realistically at the costs of overhauling healthcare in the US, as well as other issues, and global health drops down a peg.

I personally don’t think he has broken his promise. Even though I haven’t had a private audience with Barack about this, I tend to think that he has to put some things on hold, and all the hysteria with the swine flu hasn’t helped matters.

The paragraphs in bold letters are the way they were written for the press release, and not my handiwork.

Global HIV/AIDS & TB Experts Disappointed With Obama Budget Call on Congress to Overturn Short-Changing of PEPFAR, Other Health Programs

Leading disease experts said President Barack Obama’s 2010 budget proposal for global health falls far short of what is needed to combat the deadly twin epidemics of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.

Details on global health spending were released by the White House today, and a preliminary analysis indicates the President is proposing only $165 million in additional funding for bilateral AIDS as well as the US contribution to the Global Fund.

“This proposal is even worse than we had feared. With this spending request, Obama has broken his campaign promise to provide $1 billion a year in new money for global AIDS, and he has overlooked the growing threat of tuberculosis,” said the Center for Global Health Policy’s Director, Christine Lubinski.

While malaria receives a significant boost, Obama’s call for a meager increase in the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) budget is no match for the scope of the AIDS crisis, which killed 2 million people in 2007, nearly 5,500 a day.

Obama’s detailed budget blueprint comes as developing countries are struggling to preserve their fragile health systems. In several countries, drug shortages and treatment program cutbacks now threaten the lives of millions of HIV/AIDS and TB patients.

This unfolding health crisis could quickly spread, as people who stop treatment become far more infectious. Treatment disruption can also lead to drug-resistance, an extremely expensive and potentially deadly development.

“Increases in the PEPFAR budget are needed to continue progress in expanding treatment access and to invest in prevention interventions, like male circumcision, that will save money in the long run,” said Ken Mayer, MD, co-chair of the Center’s Scientific Advisory Committee. “Sadly, this budget is bound to stall the fragile progress made in saving lives with antiretroviral drugs and could force a self-defeating choice between providing treatment or greater prevention.”

The President’s proposed budget includes only a very small, $10 million increase for bilateral TB programs, which is woefully inadequate for a disease that killed more than 1.7 million people in 2007. With drug-resistant TB on the rise across the globe, a much more aggressive commitment is needed to battling this deadly, debilitating ailment.

Investments in preventing and treating HIV and TB are urgent because they strengthen underlying health systems in the developing world, bolstering their ability to respond to other disease outbreaks such as influenza.

“Short-changing the response to TB is extremely shortsighted, since last month the World Health Organization called drug resistant TB a ‘time bomb,’” noted Carol Dukes Hamilton, MD, co-chair of the Center’s Scientific Advisory Committee. “Today’s Obama proposal contradicts the bill that the President co-sponsored last year when he was a U.S. Senator, which promised $4 billion over 2009-2013 for TB programs,” she said.

AIDS and TB experts were also disappointed by Obama’s proposed US contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which has saved an estimated 3.5 million lives from these three deadly diseases since its 2002 inception. The Fund also provides significant resources for health system strengthening.

Increased support for the Fund is vital to increasing capacity in poor countries to develop and support large-scale health programs. The Fund is facing for this year and next a $5 billion donation gap, jeopardizing a program that provides a quarter of all international financing for AIDS globally and two-thirds for tuberculosis. Leaders at the Center for Global Health Policy vowed to press Congress for an emergency infusion of resources into the Fund through the 2009 supplemental budget and a $2.7 billion commitment to the Fund in fiscal year 2010.

I don’t know this person, but I just saw this article about her. She’s in medical school and has leukemia, and is in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant. I know, there are a lot of sad stories, but I guess I am highlighting this one because she is a future healthcare professional, and who knows, may decide to become an oncologist–a specialty that is shrinking in numbers but increasing in need.

So if you are mixed black/white, and willing to up some cells to a good cause, check this out.

Natasha Collins needs a hero.

Collins, 26, was diagnosed with leukemia in 2006 and needs a bone marrow transplant, which could save her life. She is waiting on the right donor, but that is proving difficult because she is half black and half Caucasian.

Because of that, her chances of finding a matching donor are less likely.

“It’s scary,” Collins said. “I try not to think about all the consequences all the time. I try to keep it day by day.”

Of those listed in the donor registry of the National Marrow Donor Program, mixed race people representing a mere 2 percent of the total, according to the Mavin Foundation.

Because of this, the odds of a patient of any minority heritage, or combination of heritages, being able to find a BMT donor when needed are extremely small.

Originally from upstate New York, Collins takes classes at Yale Medical School and lives in New Haven while undergoing chemotherapy treatments.

The chemotherapy and an umbilical cord blood transplant prevailed for a year and a half, but she relapsed in February of this year.