A national survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation has found that most people in the USA favour government support for global health, but don’t think it should be increased until the economic decline has ended.

Two-thirds of the random survey of 2,500 people who were interviewed supported maintaining (39%) or increasing (26%) funding to improve health in developing countries, but 71% said there should be no increase at the present time. 23% said the government was already spending too much.

The US now provides a much greater proportion of global health support than was the case a few years ago and we now wait to see how the Obama administration will approach the issue. The results of surveys like this one may have an influence on what the government decides.

Further insights into current thinking in the US may be gained from the transcript of a programme on PBS (the US non-profit public broadcasting television service), in which viewers sent in questions for Michele Moloney-Kitts (assistant US global AIDS coordinator) and Christine Lubinski (the Infectious Diseases Society of America’s vice president for global health). TropIKA.net readers are urged to take the trouble to take a look at the transcript. Firstly, because of the range of well-informed questions that were asked, and also because some of the answers reveal a lot about what the Obama administration has in mind.

Michele Moloney-Kitts says that the main difference between the Bush approach to global health and that which the new administration will adopt is that it will be broader, and will extend beyond AIDS, malaria and TB. She specifically lists mother-and-child health and neglected tropical diseases as areas that will now receive attention.