Steps against poverty
On Friday, two weeks after the World Bank Governors approved a major push to end poverty, Jim Yong Kim, M.D. ’91, Ph.D. ’93, president of the World Bank Group, described the plan to a Harvard audience in the Asia Center’s annual Tsai Lecture at the Science Center. Within 17 years, the bank seeks to reduce the proportion of people living on $1.25 a day or less to 3 percent, the lowest possible figure given natural disasters. “It’s the first time in history that the world has said we can end poverty as we know it,” said Kim, co-founder of Partners In Health, the Boston-based nonprofit working with the poor on four continents. Kim is a former president of Dartmouth College and also served as director of the World Health Organization’s HIV-AIDS department, where he led a successful effort to treat 3 million new HIV-AIDS patients in developing countries with antiretroviral drugs. In the hourlong...