A new name surfaced today as a possible candidate for U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator: Houston pediatrician Mark Kline.
Kline is being touted by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, according the Houston Chronicle. Click here to read the Chronicle’s story, which details Kline’s work starting the International Pediatric AIDS Initiative and setting up HIV/AIDS clinics in Africa and Romania.
Whether President Barack Obama would turn to Hutchison—a conservative Republican positioning herself for a gubernatorial bid—for advice on global AIDS is far from clear. Meanwhile, another potential candidate—Dr. Jim Young Kim—appears to be out of the running for the global AIDS post.
The New York Times reports that Kim, a Harvard professor and former AIDS chief with the World Health Organization, is poised to become the next president of Dartmouth College. Click here to read the Times’ story on Kim.
At least one reader of this blog, Dr. Shelley M. Gordon, of the Infectious Diseases Associates Medical Group in San Francisco, thinks the ousted Mark Dybul, should be re-hired.
Dybul, who had a very successful run as head of PEPFAR in the Bush years, was initially asked by the Obama folks to stay. He was then asked to resign when Obama officially took office.
Ever since, global HIV/AIDS advocates have been buzzing about a replacement.
Besides Kline, other possible contenders include: Dr. Eric Goosby, the CEO and Chief Medical Officer of Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation and a professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco; Dr. Nils Daulaire, former president of the Global Health Council; Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, an epidemiologist at the Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health; and Warren Buckingham III, the director of PEPFAR in Kenya.
Goosby, Kline and El-Sadr are all members of HIVMA/IDSA.
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