WASHINGTON: Indian-Origin Man Is Global Coordinator For Biden’s Malaria Initiative

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden has
appointed Indian-origin Raj Panjabi to lead his Malaria Initiative, which is
mainly in African and Asian countries.

“After
being sworn in this morning, I’m honored to share that I’ve been appointed
by” Joe Biden as the president’s Malaria Coordinator to lead the US
president’s Malaria Initiative, Raj Panjabi said on twitter. “I’m grateful
for this chance to serve,” he added.

Born in
Liberia, Raj Panjabi and his family fled the county during its civil war and
arrived in the United States as refugees in the 1990s.

My family
and I arrived in America 30 years ago after fleeing civil war in Liberia. A
community of Americans rallied around my family to help us build back our
lives. It’s an honor to serve the country that helped build back my own life as
part of the Biden-Harris Administration.

“In
the face of unprecedented crises, I am humbled by the challenges our country
and our world faces to build back better. But as I have learned in America: we
are not defined by the conditions we face, we are defined by how we
respond,” Raj Panjabi said in a series of tweets.

As a
doctor and public health professional who has cared for patients alongside the
staff of the President’s Malaria Initiative and its partners USAID and Center
for Disease Control, Raj Panjabi said: “I’ve been inspired by how they’ve
responded to fight malaria, one of the oldest and deadliest pandemics, and saved
lives around the world.”

He said
this mission is personal for him. “My grandparents and parents were
infected with malaria while living in India. As a child in Liberia, I fell sick
with malaria, and as a doctor serving in Africa, I have seen this disease take
too many lives,” he said.

“I’ve
seen how” the Malaria Initiative and its partners have responded with
resolve in the countries where it operates.

“I’ve seen the relief on the
faces of parents whose children survived malaria because they were treated with
medicines and by health workers backed by its support,” he said.

Raj
Panjabi fled Liberia during the country’s civil war at age nine, becoming a
refugee in the US. He returned to Liberia as a medical student and in 2007,
co-founded Last Mile Health. He has served as an assistant professor of medicine
at the Harvard Medical School, an associate physician at the Brigham and
Women’s Hospital and the CEO and co-founder of Last Mile Health, according to
his profile on LinkedIn.

Raj
Panjabi and the Last Mile Health team played a key role in the 2013-16 West
Africa Ebola epidemic, helping train over a thousand frontline and community
health workers and support the government of Liberia to lead its national Ebola
Operations Centre. Raj Panjabi delivered testimony on the Ebola epidemic at the
US Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee.

In
response to COVID-19, he led Last Mile Health to support governments in Africa
to train frontline health workers. He served as the advisor to former president
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in her role as the co-chair of the Independent Panel for
Pandemic Preparedness and Response at the World Health Organization (WHO). Raj
Panjabi has cared for patients with COVID and urgent care needs.

He is a
graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, trained in
internal medicine and primary care at Massachusetts General Hospital and
Harvard Medical School, and received a masters degree in public health in
epidemiology from Johns Hopkins. He has served as a faculty member at the Harvard
Kennedy School.