Ramanan Laxminarayan

Ramanan Laxminarayan
Born
Kampala, Uganda
EducationUniversity of Washington Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani
Scientific career
FieldsPublic health

Ramanan Laxminarayan Ph.D., M.P.H., FIDSA (born in Kampala, Uganda) is an economist and an epidemiologist. He is founder and director of the One Health Trust – formerly known as the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy (CDDEP) – in Washington, D.C., and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Antimicrobial Resistance. Laxminarayan is a senior research scholar at Princeton University, an affiliate professor at the University of Washington, a senior associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a visiting professor at the University of Strathclyde. In 2023, he was appointed an honorary visiting professor at the National University of Singapore Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health. His research on epidemiological models of infectious diseases and economic analysis of drug resistance, and research on public health gets attention from leaders and policymakers worldwide.[1][2] He served on the President Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology’s antimicrobial resistance working group. He served as a voting member of the U.S. Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antimicrobial Resistance from 2015 to 2023.[3] He has served as chairperson of the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to developing new antimicrobials, since its founding. GARDP was created by the World Health Organization and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi).[4][5]

Laxminarayan was a key architect of the Affordable Medicines Facility-malaria (AMFm), an innovative financing mechanism to provide affordable, effective antimalarial drugs worldwide.[6] The idea emerged from an Institute of Medicine panel chaired by economist Kenneth Arrow that called for global subsidies to ensure that artemisinin-based antimalarials were introduced to crowd out monotherapies that would result in resistance.[7] Laxminarayan served on that panel and subsequently worked extensively on the design of the subsidy mechanism.[8][9]  AMFm was launched in 2008 with a commitment from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.[10]

Laxminarayan is a leading global expert on understanding of antibiotic resistance as a problem of managing a shared global resource. Through his prolific research, active public outreach and sustained policy engagement, Laxminarayan played a central role in bringing the issue of drug resistance to the attention of leaders and policymakers worldwide and to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2016.[11][12]  His TED talk on antibiotic resistance which helped bring attention to this issue has been viewed more than a million times.[13]  

During the Obama administration, Laxminarayan served on the U.S. President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology's antimicrobial resistance working group.[14] He was subsequently appointed a voting member of the U.S. Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antimicrobial Resistance in 2016. He was appointed to a second term under the Trump administration.[15] In 2016, he was invited to deliver the John LaMontagne Lecture[16] at NIAID by Dr Anthony Fauci.

Laxminarayan is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science, and a fellow of the Infectious Disease Society of America. He is a series editor of the Disease Control Priorities for Developing Countries, 3rd edition.[17]

  1. ^ "What India Needs to Fight the Virus". The New York Times. 27 March 2020. Retrieved 26 April 2020.
  2. ^ Mashal, Mujib; Kumar, Hari (11 July 2021). "One Village Quelled the Virus. The Next Was Overrun. It's a Bad Sign for India". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 13 March 2022.
  3. ^ "Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria". Assistant Secretary for Health Department of Health and Human Services Washington, DC. Retrieved 26 April 2020.
  4. ^ Maxmen, Amy (7 July 2017). "Untreatable Gonorrhea on the Rise Worldwide". Nature magazine. Retrieved 26 April 2020.
  5. ^ "C V OF RAMANAN LAXMINARAYAN" (PDF). cddep.org/. Retrieved 27 April 2020.
  6. ^ Laxminarayan, Ramanan; Gelband, Hellen (July 2009). "A global subsidy: key to affordable drugs for malaria?". Health Affairs. 28 (4): 949–961. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.28.4.949. ISSN 1544-5208. PMID 19597193.
  7. ^ Medicine, Institute of (20 July 2004). Saving Lives, Buying Time: Economics of Malaria Drugs in an Age of Resistance. ISBN 978-0-309-09218-0.
  8. ^ Laxminarayan, Ramanan; Parry, Ian W. H.; Smith, David L.; Klein, Eili Y. (1 May 2010). "Should new antimalarial drugs be subsidized?". Journal of Health Economics. 29 (3): 445–456. doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2010.03.002. ISSN 0167-6296. PMID 20381182.
  9. ^ Laxminarayan, Ramanan; Arrow, Kenneth; Jamison, Dean; Bloom, Barry R. (2 November 2012). "From Financing to Fevers: Lessons of an Antimalarial Subsidy Program". Science. 338 (6107): 615–616. Bibcode:2012Sci...338..615L. doi:10.1126/science.1231010. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 23118173. S2CID 169000409.
  10. ^ Laxminarayan, Ramanan; Gelband, Hellen (July 2009). "A Global Subsidy: Key To Affordable Drugs For Malaria?". Health Affairs. 28 (4): 949–961. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.28.4.949. ISSN 0278-2715. PMID 19597193.
  11. ^ Jørgensen, Peter S.; Wernli, Didier; Carroll, Scott P.; Dunn, Robert R.; Harbarth, Stephan; Levin, Simon A.; So, Anthony D.; Schlüter, Maja; Laxminarayan, Ramanan (8 September 2016). "Use antimicrobials wisely". Nature News. 537 (7619): 159–161. Bibcode:2016Natur.537..159J. doi:10.1038/537159a. PMID 27604934.
  12. ^ Laxminarayan, Ramanan; Sridhar, Devi; Blaser, Martin; Wang, Minggui; Woolhouse, Mark (26 August 2016). "Achieving global targets for antimicrobial resistance". Science. 353 (6302): 874–875. Bibcode:2016Sci...353..874L. doi:10.1126/science.aaf9286. hdl:20.500.11820/34211550-a24c-4a47-a0f0-128c404f2176. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 27540009. S2CID 206650312.
  13. ^ Laxminarayan, Ramanan, The coming crisis in antibiotics, retrieved 12 August 2020
  14. ^ Members of PCAST Antibiotic Resistance Working Group
  15. ^ Health (ASH), Assistant Secretary for (8 February 2016). "Voting Member (SGE): Ramanan Laxminarayan, PhD, MPH". HHS.gov. Retrieved 12 August 2020.
  16. ^ The State of the World’s Antibiotics. 5 April 2016. Retrieved 12 July 2024 – via videocast.nih.gov.
  17. ^ "Ramanan Laxminarayan | DCP3". dcp-3.org. Retrieved 12 August 2020.