Frist: An Idea for Mother’s Day.

Tuesday I had a tremendous experience in Memphis when I helped launch Save the Children’s State of the World’s Mothers report, which draws attention to the fact that more than 200 million children under age 5 worldwide lack basic health care measures. These aren’t high-tech, high-cost health care interventions…these are simple solutions like antibiotics to treat pneumonia or a remedy of sugar and salt when mixed with clean water that can treat diarrhea. These measures can save more than 15,000 children’s lives around the world every day.
And while that seems like a topic that is very distant from our lives in America or Tennessee, my time in Memphis with the children and faculty of Lamplighter Montessori School brought home how close we really are to the far corners of the world – and how every person, young and old alike, can make a difference in the lives of kids in need halfway across the globe.

I had the great pleasure of talking with students about my trip to Bangladesh last August, when I helped deliver hand-knitted baby caps to new moms and newborns in Save the Children health programs there, which are supported by USAID. Indeed, Lamplighter students themselves made some of the 3,000 caps from Tennessee that made their way to Bangladesh to keep babies warm (and increase their chance of survival) during their first critical hours and days of life.

There was a real excitement about being with the children whose little hands knitted the caps that I had the ultimate pleasure of putting on babies’ heads in Bangladesh as everything came full circle. It was extraordinary to be a part of the entire process … but it was even better knowing that all of us had pulled together to make a big and important difference in the health of children living in Bangladesh and in other countries where children don’t always make it past 5 years old.

Lamplighter students ages 7 to 10 knitted caps and used their voices as part of a project to call on their leaders in Washington to increase funding for newborn and child health programs in developing countries. They told me about their “hard day of lobbying” on Capitol Hill, where they went with baby caps in hand to be heard on behalf of all the world’s babies. Who wouldn’t be inspired by the actions of such young children trying to make a difference?

You can help, too. I’ve mentioned the Global Child Survival Act in this blog before. This legislation, backed by more than 100 members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, could save the lives of millions more newborns and young children globally – every year – and provide health solutions where they are most needed.

It’s critical that you let your representatives in Washington know that you support this bill … and that you keep the power of using medicine as a currency for peace in mind when visiting the ballot box in November. Let’s not let this opportunity to save millions of young lives pass. What better gift can we give moms around the world this Mother’s Day than to raise our voices to address this challenge?

-Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, M.D

Caps to our Nation’s Capital; Frist to a TN School

On Tuesday, May 5, Save the Children and Doctor and Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist visited our school to launch the 2008 State of the Worlds’ Mothers Report. Who would think that learning to knit would bring so much excitement? Not the first second and third graders in Cordova, TN at Lamplighter Montessori School who knitted infant caps for Save the Children’s Caps to the Capital campaign!

Our students knitted the caps and sent them to Save the Children. Then they were invited to D.C to lobby with Save the Children. This week our school was chosen as The United States launch site for the 2008 report. Bright and early on Tuesday morning our students went on TV to promote awareness of the report. Later in the day, Senator Frist visited the school to talk about the simple and inexpensive ways children’s lives can be saved; warm caps for infants, hand washing, clean water and immunizations. The students showed Senator Frist the caps they had knitted in anticipation of another “Caps to the Capital” campaign.

Our Middle School students presented Save the Children, Senator Frist, Shelby County Mayor A. C. Wharton and ONE with student paintings to show our appreciation for the work being done to help children all over the world reach their first birthday.

-Terrie Sampson, Head of School, Lamplighter Montessori School

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Sammi’s Here!

ONE super volunteer Sammi Fredenburg of Seattle, Washington, arrived in DC today so that she can present at the Global Child Survival Act hearing on the Hill tomorrow. Senator Dodd and Former Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist, M.D., will also be speaking.

She walked by my desk just now so I insisted she had to wait while I got a photo. Above, Sammi poses with Josh Chernila who works both Internet and field for ONE.

Frist on the Global Child Survival Act

(Senator Frist administering Vitamin A to a child in Bangladesh.)

Frist: a question for our next president.



For Americans, and especially our next president, President Bush’s trip to Africa last week wasn’t a victory lap. It’s a starting line. A challenge. The opening, not the closing, of a legacy in which medicine and health diplomacy serve as a currency for peace.

The trip demonstrated for the next president, whoever that may be, the tremendous opportunity that awaits in Africa. Yes, there is much work to do, and we are still confronted by staggering realities: More than 24.7 million people still have HIV/AIDS in Africa alone; thousands still die from malaria each day, and more than one billion people worldwide still don’t have access to clean water.

But never before have we had the tools we now possess to do this vital work - the medicines and technologies that are saving lives as you read these words have never been so inexpensive and so readily available. When you think about it, it’s amazing that AIDS drugs now cost as little as $1 a day . . . that a mosquito net can now protect a child from malaria for five years for $5 . . . that a well can provide clean, safe drinking water for 20 years at a cost of only $20 a person.
And never before have we had so many answers to the doubts of the past, the criticisms that dominated the debate over the effectiveness of American foreign assistance for a generation. Many of the old presumptions about Africa and other developing regions have been proved wrong, addressed through transparency and accountability, or dismissed by new approaches and 21st century technologies.

Last week President Bush visited some of the HIV-positive men, women, and children in poverty-stricken communities who are living today because of American-funded medicines. To date, around 1.4 million Africans now receive anti-retroviral pills through the president’s AIDS initiative.

Want to see health diplomacy making a difference? Want to see medicine serving as a currency for peace? Stare into the eyes of a mother whose daughter is alive thanks to America.

Critics once said that investing in Africa was worse than throwing money away, that the dollars would find their way into corrupt leaders’ bank accounts and perpetuate poverty. But the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) has changed the way America provides foreign assistance, attacking corruption head on by engaging leaders to take the difficult steps toward government reform, accountability, and transparency.

Just last week the president signed the largest MCA grant ever, a $698 million agreement with Tanzania. More than merely sending dollars, the MCA ensures that American assistance not only reaches those it’s designed to help, but that it’s setting structures in place - the rule of law, freer economic policies - for African countries to thrive on their own.
Last week we saw what American compassion and leadership can look like when invested in proven, effective solutions we know work.

I hope our next president is paying attention. I hope he or she sees the power of American health diplomacy, of using medicine as a currency for peace: the power to save lives, to lead under the guiding principles of compassion and human dignity.

We have the science. We can afford the pills and bed nets and wells. We have answers to the classic criticisms of the past. The question that remains is simple: Do we have the will to employ all this know-how, all these answers to help countless people throughout the world?

That sounds like a question for our next president.



-Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, M.D.