Jeffrey Sachs, Ph.D., director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, for his work on the United Nations Millennium Project, a multinational plan to halve global poverty and hunger by the year 2015.

As director of the UN Millennium Project, Jeffrey Sachs had a simple but revolutionary goal: to halve global poverty and hunger by the year 2015. Sachs draws links between the health of a nation’s inhabitants and the economic capabilities of the nation, and the internationally agreed upon goals of the Millennium Development Project focus on disease control and eliminating malnutrition in some of the world’s poorest countries. The goals include targets for reducing AIDS, malaria, and other major diseases, as well as the rates of infant and maternal mortality. Sachs has brought these issues to the forefront of a global agenda with the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations, and his conviction in the attainability of these goals has galvanized the international community.

Sachs first received international acclaim in the mid-1980s, when he was only 30 years old, for his work advising the Bolivian government during that country’s financial crisis. The Harvard educated economist proposed reforms that are largely credited with ending hyperinflation and bringing financial stability to the country. Sachs went on to advise governments in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, as well as Asia and Africa, and has worked with international agencies on economic reforms, disease control, and debt reduction.

Sachs spent more than 20 years at Harvard University and served as director for the Center for International Development. For the past three years, he has been director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, which is dedicated to addressing global poverty and sustainable development.  Sachs is the Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development and professor of health policy and management at Columbia, and was named one of the 100 most influential leaders in the world by Time magazine.

 

AWARD PRESENTER Dr. Richard Feachem

In 2002, Dr. Richard Feachem was appointed executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. The Global Fund provides resources to countries to develop programs to combat these three pandemics, and while the fund is relatively new, results have already been seen in countries such as Ghana, Haiti, and Honduras. Before becoming executive director, he served as the dean of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and held the positions of director and senior adviser for Health, Nutrition, and Population at the World Bank. In 1999 Feachem was appointed founding director of the Institute for Global Health. He is currently on leave of absence from his position as professor of International Health at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco. Feachem has been actively involved in global health and development for more than 30 years, and is a member of the Institute of Medicine.

 

THE CHALLENGE Improving Health in Resource Scarce Settings

Health and poverty are inextricably linked around the globe. Lack of drinking water, adequate nutrition, and sanitary living conditions result in millions of deaths, and many countries are unable to dedicate resources towards combating plagues that have been largely eradicated in more developed nations. Many inhabitants of the poorest countries suffer from preventable diseasesÑ more than 5 million children die annually from treatable diseases such as malaria and pneumonia. Water-borne diseases take the lives of 5 million people annually. While many HIV-positive people who live in wealthy countries have access to drug therapies that prolong life spans, HIV/AIDS kills 6,000 people around the globe every day, and another 8,200 are infected. Women and children are disproportionately impacted by poverty-related health crises in the world. In sub-Saharan Africa, a woman has a 1 in 16 chance of dying in pregnancy, compared with a 1 in 3,700 chance in North America. Every minute a woman dies in pregnancy and childbirth. Every year more than 11 million children die, six million from malnutrition before their fifth birthday, and in Africa, more than one million children die annually from malaria.

 

THE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH RESPONDS

Faculty and students at the School are looking for ways to eliminate global epidemics and improve the quality of life for people around the world. Some are actively involved in economics and health, while others are working towards reducing transmission of diseases and improving infant and maternal health outcomes in poor countries. Some of the projects include:

• Researching the relationship between economic incentives and improved health in programs like PROGRESA in Mexico

• Advising governments through the World Bank on sustainable health policies to protect children in developing countries

• Investigating the transmission of schistomiasis (also called snail fever) in rural China, and developing strategies for containment and prevention

• Offering practical strategies for curbing the spread of leptospirosis in Brazil's shantytowns by improving sewage systems

• Developing practical, cost-effective means for reducing maternal death due to bleeding during childbirth in sub-Saharan Africa

• Examining the relationship between latent and active tuberculosis in Brazil and India, and developing new methods of disease detection and prevention