His language clear and his style unflappable, Richard Besser has the ideal bedside manner for a US citizenry nervous about a full-fledged pandemic of the deadly swine flu virus.
The acting director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has emerged as the no-nonsense yet soothing public face of the US administration’s response to the outbreak of H1N1 influenza.
US President Barack Obama lacked a health secretary until late Tuesday when Kathleen Sebelius finally won Senate confirmation. Besser has filled the void with aplomb.
“Unfortunately I would anticipate that we will see additional deaths,” the 49-year-old physician said Wednesday after the CDC confirmed a Mexican toddler who died in Texas had become the first person killed by swine flu on US soil.
Coming from some public officials, such dire warnings might be expected to sow fear and alarm. But Besser has won media plaudits for giving a clear enunciation of the facts in layman’s talk.
“It’s a serious outbreak we’re dealing with,” he said, spelling out an “aggressive” response by health authorities.
“With a new infectious agent, you don’t sit back and wait and hope for the best,” he added, while urging the public not to lose sight of the fact that common-or-garden flu remains a deadly threat every year.
A BREATH OF FRESH AIR
After the previous administration of former US president George W. Bush was accused of preferring political loyalty to expertise, the prominence of scientific specialists in the Obama government has been a relief to some.
Jeff Levi, executive director of Trust For America’s Health, said Besser and his colleagues were providing “clear and strong” leadership at a fraught time.
With his well-received handling of the swine flu crisis, the good doctor has done his career prospects no harm. Sebelius might name him as permanent CDC chief. Obama meanwhile is still looking for a surgeon-general.
Besser is a pediatrics specialist who received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986 before completing his post-graduate residency at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.
The Washington Post said he then worked in Bangladesh for a year researching the spread of disease — an early interest that is now bearing fruit in the swine flu outbreak.
Imposing at 2m, his ease in front of the cameras was helped by a 1990s stint as a TV health reporter in San Diego, California, according to the New York Times.
Besser’s father and brother are both doctors, although another brother works as a medical malpractice lawyer — a profession that is generally loathed by the community of US physicians.
He had been at the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia for 13 years before his elevation in January to acting director, starting as a researcher into the epidemiology of food-borne diseases.
That job sent Besser to Boston where, according to the Times, he painstakingly analyzed deer droppings in apple orchards to pinpoint cider as the cause of an Escherichia coli bacteria (E. coli) outbreak that had caused serious illness in the city.
NO STRANGER TO CRISIS
Besser received vital grounding for his current high profile by taking over as the CDC’s head of emergency response in August 2005 — just as Hurricane Katrina slammed into
New Orleans.
On his blog, security specialist
Rich Cooper described meeting Besser in 2006 at a Harvard University-sponsored forum on preparing leaders to deal with national crises.
Cooper wrote: “In spending time with him in that program, you got the feeling that if we ever had a really bad day in this country, he was a guy you wanted to have around.”
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