AIDS-prevention envoy coordinating coronavirus fight
Deborah Birx was visiting South Africa in her role as the State Department’s global ambassador for AIDS prevention and treatment when she got a call from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to fly home to Washington immediately.
Pompeo, who recalled the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine because President Donald Trump didn’t trust her, had a far different message for Birx, according to people familiar with the decision — the president needed her to coordinate the nation’s response to the coronavirus.
Birx, 63, a medical doctor and retired Army colonel, was appointed to her ambassador’s post under then-President Barack Obama.
“Her reputation is stellar,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development. She’s a natural choice, he said, “if you’re looking to try to bring a competent steady hand into this process and someone with a proven track record on global health matters.”
Birx served for nine years as director of global efforts to fight HIV and AIDS at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a key agency in tackling the current outbreak. She was named to her State Department post in 2014.
While Vice President Mike Pence has become the spokesman for the administration’s effort to halt the spread of the coronavirus, Birx has been leading the scientific and medical efforts to stem the disease by working with the agencies and experts she knows well.
Matt Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser, recommended her for the position, according to a person familiar with the decision.
Birx has had to “navigate different bureaucracies” in the military and at the CDC, and that’s valuable because it’s “probably her biggest challenge now,” said Jeffrey Crowley, who was director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy during the Obama administration.
She’s also shown as politically astute. As the U.S. envoy on AIDS, Birx chose the Vatican as a setting for a conference where pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies would find it hard to say no to her pleas for more spending on drugs to treat HIV-positive babies.
Birx won confirmation for the State Department position thanks to support from Republicans who told the Obama administration that her no-nonsense approach made her a candidate they would accept, according to a person close to her.
During the Trump administration, Birx went toe to toe with international organizations by refusing to allow funds from her office to go to the leftist President Nicolas Maduro’s regime in Venezuela.
“She was a forceful advocate for President Trump’s policy that not a single dime of American taxpayer money should go toward propping up the Maduro regime,” said Matt Mowers, an aide in Trump’s 2016 campaign who was Birx’s chief of staff for almost two years.