Ten months into his administration, President Obama has finally chosen a nominee to run the US Agency for International Development. The delay had prompted growing complaints from development specialists that the administration was failing to live up to its pledge to make global health and development a priority and a pillar of its foreign policy.
Obama yesterday nominated Dr. Rajiv Shah, a 36-year-old former official with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Shah is a medical doctor and was confirmed by the Senate earlier this year for his current role as a senior official at the Agriculture Department dealing with food security, so he has already been vetted and should easily win approval for the USAID job.
Shah’s nomination also formally puts an end to speculation that Obama would tap Dr. Paul Farmer, the global health pioneer and co-founder of Boston-based Partners in Health.
Farmer was said to be a front-runner for the USAID position earlier this year, but his candidacy apparently became bogged down in the Obama administration’s onerous vetting procedures, prompting Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to howl publicly about how “ridiculous’’ the nominating process had become.
During the summer, Capitol Hill staffers said that Farmer was no longer under consideration, either because he had withdrawn from consideration or was ruled out for some reason. Farmer declined public comment all along, and pressed ahead with his many health and development projects in countries including Haiti and Rwanda, in addition to his work at Partners and as chairman of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
