February 4, 2014
WASHINGTON: Midway through his confirmation hearing before the Senate Health Committee, Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia asked Vivek Murthy, nominee for US surgeon general, whether he had met Dr Raj Shah, USAID administrator, and the highest-ranked Indian-American in the Obama administration.
February 4, 2014
WASHINGTON: Midway through his confirmation hearing before the Senate Health Committee, Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia asked Vivek Murthy, nominee for US surgeon general, whether he had met Dr Raj Shah, USAID administrator, and the highest-ranked Indian-American in the Obama administration.
Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy, President Barack Obama's nominee to be the next U.S. Surgeon General, listens on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2014, during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
No I haven't, Murthy replied. You should, Senator Isakson advised him; you guys have the same background and same heritage, and you can learn from the great job he has done at USAID.
The exchange, coming just hours after Microsoft elevated Satya Nadella as the CEO, served to highlight how people of Indian-origin are increasingly breaching the glass ceiling in the US, in areas as wide apart as industry, academia, and government. But nowhere is it as prominent as in healthcare and medicine domain, where an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 physicians of Indian-origin and their work in the sector has catapulted these two to the tops jobs in the government.
Like Raj Shah, the 41-year-old Detroit-born USAID administrator, Murthy is also a young physician who was born abroad (in UK), but has cut his developmental teeth in India (both of them worked in the boondocks in Karnataka after getting their medical degree in the US. In fact, Murthy is so young (he's only 37) that the joke before the hearing was that the only thing that stood between him and the confirmation was his age. In the nearly 150-year history of the office of the surgeon-general, who is basically the nation's doctor, no one below 50 has ever occupied the post.
But with flecks of grey hair (he must have colored it grey, someone else joked) on his young head, Murthy took on questions with aplomb, after dedicating his rise in the US to his father Halligere Murthy, his mother Maithreyi, and his sister Rashmi Murthy, also a physician. He recalled his grandfather, who he said was a poor farmer in Karnataka who would never have dreamed that his grandson would make it this far.
The expected fireworks on account of Murthy's close identification with Obamacare (he was one of the early backers) was yet to come at the time of writing, but there was plenty of tough questioning from Republican Senators in a Democratic-majority committee where ruling party lawmakers heartily endorsed him. One Senator questioned him closely over the growing acceptance and use of medical marijuana.
"There is some anecdotal evidence that I might help in some case," Murthy replied cautiously. "But we need more information about safe doses, risks etc before we can prescribe it widely."
As Murthy navigated his way through the questions, the Senators seemed to warm up to him, praising his outlook of creating a "continuum of healthcare" in a country that spends more than any other nation in the world in the area but achieves relatively poor results. Murthy has identified obesity, tobacco-related diseases, and mental health as his principal challenges in a job that will make him the leading spokesperson on matters of public health in the US and the operational head of the 6500-strong U.S Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, one of the seven uniformed services of the United States that includes army, navy, air force and marines.
courtesy: TNN
