Bush/Cheney and Global Public Health Challenges

Let's consider for a moment the article currently front and center on WaPo:

Bush Appointee Blocked Surgeon General's Draft

I don't yet have a copy of the report, but its draft includes the following:

"we cannot overstate . . . that problems in remote parts of the globe can no longer be ignored. Diseases that Americans once read about as affecting people in regions . . . most of us would never visit are now capable of reaching us directly. The hunger, disease, and death resulting from poor food and nutrition create social and political instability . . . and that instability may spread to other nations as people migrate to survive."

Yes. And without provoking a flame war by getting involved in the partisan debate associated with the release (or non-release) of this report, let me tie this article to the world's largest public challenge: unsafe water and inadequate sanitation. They are not only the world's largest public health challenges but also the most solvable.

Safe water is not gun control or abortion or Iraq. It is noncontroversial, and supported by all save a few rabid isolationists. So let's ask this White House to fully fund 2005's Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act and include this request in their FY09 budget to Congress this fall. Further updates shortly on how the FY08 process is going, btw.