Friday, January 10, 2014

Went to White House for farewell reception for Grant N. Colfax, head of the Office of National AIDS policy (ONAP). He had been at the job for 1 ½ years. He is returning to be in San Francisco with his partner and family. He is a good guy who did a good job. During the speeches, he called me out as “a legend in HIV/AIDS” and said how wonderful it was to work with me. Jan.14, 2014 – Seasonal influenza is beginning to peak and I am doing the usual media. Did FOX News. Jan. 24 – Feb. 1, 2014 – Prince Mahidol Award – Bangkok. See attachment for daily schedule: Mahidol - Bangkok 2014.doc In summary, I received the 2013 Prince Mahidol Award in Medicine together with David Ho. Peter Piot (Director, London School of Public Health and Hygiene) and Jim Yong Kim (President, World Bank) received the Prince Mahidol Award in Public Health. It was a most extraordinary trip. We were hosted by the Royal Family of Thailand and we were afforded luxurious treatment. Indicative of this treatment was the fact that we were picked up at the airport in Bangkok by a representative of the royal family and was driven to our hotel with a double police escort. By double police escort I mean a motorcycle policeman leading the motorcade followed by a police car followed by a brand-new Mercedes which carried me, my wife Christine and Gray Handley, my associate director for global affairs, at NIAID. We spent an entire week in Thailand. The center of the activities was the award ceremony at the Palace of the royal family. The pomp and circumstance was most extraordinary. I received a gold medal and a check for $50,000 from the Princess of Thailand. In addition to the extraordinary ceremony followed by a festive dinner at the Palace, we were treated to police escorted tours of several of the other palaces, the Emerald Buddha, as well as other historic places. In addition Chris and I and Gray toured the famous Thai canals on a boat as well as went to the major market in Bangkok, which is the largest open market in the world. Our hotel was lavish. I also did a considerable amount of work giving two official lectures, a panel discussion together with David Ho, Peter Piot, and Jim Kim, when he was present. Jim was only there for part of the time since he had just come back from Burma where, as President of the World Bank, he gave $2 billion to Burma. In addition, I visited this Siriraj hospital, the Thai Red Cross and anonymous clinic, the CDC facility, the Silom clinic, and other facilities (see attached agenda) where we discussed some of the NIAID sponsored clinical trials on HIV. Of particular interest was the study that was done in collaboration with the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Science (AFRIMS) on acute HIV infection. I met some outstanding people from the CDC including Mitchell Wolfe Tim Holtz and Marcel Curlin. In addition I was accompanied throughout the entire trip by Lieut. Col. Robert O'Connell. Rob works with Nelson Michael and Jerome Kim, is the liason to the US Embassy and was an extraordinary asset to the trip. Christine and I flew back and forth first class from Washington to London (United) and then from London to Bangkok (Thai Airways). There were many perks associated with the trip. One that stood out was the fact that the royal family arranged for Chris and I to have a professional Thai massage at the spa at Bangkok airport on our way home. Of note was the fact that there was considerable political unrest in Thailand during our visit. I learned a lot about the political situation from observing and listening to my Thai colleagues. Apparently, the current Prime Minister (Yingluck Shinawatra) is the sister of the recently deposed Prime Minister who is in exile. He was exiled because he of corruption (he paid off members of Parliament to support him). However, much of the Thai population at least in Bangkok and certainly among the academics, feels that his sister is merely an extension of him and although she was democratically elected, they feel that she should be put out of office and a special council run the country until the corruption is cleared up. This creates a considerable dilemma for the United States Embassy since they want to side with democracy; however, everyone knows that the democratically elected person is steeped in corruption. I actually wound up meeting the Prime Minister at the award ceremonies at the Royal Palace. There were several demonstrations while I was there in anticipation of the elections which took place after we left on February 2. The demonstrators wanted to block the election because they wanted to have reforms before the election. It is likely that the election will not come to majority vote and that a new government will have to be formed. There was a small amount of violence while I was there including someone throwing a hand grenade into a crowd of demonstrators as well as a person murdering one of the leaders of demonstrators. We were never in any danger as we were always accompanied by a police escort. I also learned a lot about Prince Mahidol, who was the father of the current king, who is very ill. Prince Mahidol started off as a naval officer (trained in Germany, but then when he realized the poor health conditions in his country, he wanted to do something about it. He wanted to learn Medicine first and so he went to Harvard Medical School and graduated cum laude. He is considered the father of health care in his country. This was truly a memorable trip from so many standpoints.