Jim Kim, chair of the Harvard Medical School Department of Social Medicine, spoke Thursday about the future of global health to an audience of approximately 50 medical students, researchers and undergraduates.
The former director of the World Health Organization's AIDS/HIV Unit-who co-founded Partners in Health with global health activist Paul Farmer, Trinity '82-stressed the need to connect clinical knowledge with delivery of treatment to third-world nations.
"Ten million deaths can be prevented every year if we can effectively implement the treatment tools that we have already," Kim said.
Kim began his speech in the John Hope Franklin Center by describing his experience with treating patients suffering from drug-resistant tuberculosis in Haiti.
"The average cost was $25,000 per patient in 1996," he said.
When a buying team was assembled to find generic drugs from India and China, the cost was decreased to $1,500 per patient, Kim said.
"We proved to the WHO that very complicated drug interventions are possible in poor countries," Kim added.
Global health activists hope to develop sophisticated implementation methods in the next few years to combat infectious diseases in the developing world, Kim said.
"Delivery science, a new discipline, is needed to bridge the implementation gap," he said. "In Africa, only 50 percent of women who tested positive for HIV at clinics received antiretroviral therapy."
Kim has looked to the business world for ways to provide delivery implementation.
"We need to engage with our business colleagues and borrow the case study approach to teach delivery science," Kim said.
The process studies successful treatments of epidemic diseases-such as smallpox and polio-to find applicable methods that carry over to today, he added.
A large potential source of funding for global health lies in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he said.
"When the time comes, we want to make Bill Gates feel as certain and excited about global health as he is about Microsoft," Kim said.
When asked about the role of academia in global health, Kim responded that universities around the country should work together to consolidate advances in the new discipline of delivery science.
With regard to medical education, Kim said the American Medical Association has never made equity of access a priority. Lack of mentoring, ad-hoc project-based programs and few career opportunities are hindrances to global health education, he said.
Another important goal of global health is to set up viable healthcare systems in third-world countries, Kim said.
"Right now, we have people who have grown up in different systems arguing over which is better," he said. "We have yet to recruit system specialists who have built 10 or 15 health systems."
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