President William L. Henrich, M.D., MACP, (left) welcomes Tachi Yamada, M.D., president of the Global Health Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to the UT Health Science Center San Antonio for the Presidential Distinguished Lecture.
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Despite the many advances in health care over the past century that have helped people live longer and healthier lives, half the world does not have access to them and will likely never have access to them.

That is, unless new and innovative ways are found to share life-changing advances with people living in developing countries, said Tachi Yamada, M.D., president of the Global Health Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Finding solutions to global health problems
In delivering the eighth annual Presidential Distinguished Lecture April 27 at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Dr. Yamada challenged faculty members, students and community leaders to find solutions to the many health problems people in underdeveloped countries live with every day.

The Global Health Program has to date committed more than $13 billion to address such major health challenges as tuberculosis, HIV, malaria and other infectious diseases, malnutrition and maternal and child health in the developing world.

The Gates Foundation’s grant commitments include a $1.5 billion investment in the GAVI Alliance that expands childhood immunizations and $456 million funding of the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative.

Influential leader in world health
“If you were to name the top two or three people in the world who are the most knowledgeable about global health, one of them would be Dr. Yamada,” President William L. Henrich, M.D., MACP, said in his opening remarks, noting the Dr. Yamada spends 60 percent of his time traveling throughout the world to oversee Gates Foundation global health-oriented projects and programs. “That is why it is an exceptional honor for us to have Dr. Yamada with us today,” President Henrich said.

Tachi Yamada, M.D., president of the Global Health Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, met with Health Science Center students who have been involved in providing health care in developing countries. Shown are (left to right) Beth Melia, Martin Hechanova, Katie Gong, Alan Brown, Dr. Yamada, Daniel Clark, Sheridan Fielding, Payal Patel, Trisha Anest, Carolina Wilcox and Ruth Berggren. M.D., director of the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics, who has led students on medical missions to Haiti.

Dr. Yamada was born in Japan, graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in history and earned his medical degree from New York University School of Medicine. After completing his internal medicine training at the Medical College of Virginia, he became an investigator in the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and trained in gastroenterology at the UCLA School of Medicine where he became a member of the faculty.

He went to the University of Michigan, where he ultimately became chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine and physician-in-chief of the University of Michigan Medical Center. Afterwards, he served as chairman of Research and Development of GlaxoSmithKline, where he was also a member of its board of directors before joining the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Among his many honors, Dr. Yamada has been elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Medical Sciences in the United Kingdom and the National Academy of Medicine in Mexico. He has also received an honorary appointment as Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Ambassador Scholars present remembrance
Following the lecture, the Ambassador Scholars, outstanding students who represent each of the Health Science Center’s five schools, presented Dr. Yamada with a book of paintings of the city of San Antonio’s historic sites and a CD of music from the San Antonio Symphony as a remembrance of his visit.

“Our pledge to you and to Dr. Henrich is that we will take this education from the Health Science Center and this experience today and commit ourselves to the very best of academic medicine, education, research, service and patient care,” said Parya Etevari, the Ambassador Scholar representing the Dental School. The other Ambassador Scholars for 2009 include medical student Joe Dannenbaum, dental hygiene student Irene Juarez, nursing student Anna Mendez and David Reese McKay, a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

The Presidential Distinguished Lecture series is sponsored by Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P., attorneys at law.