MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The West Virginia University Global Health Program, WVU Health Sciences, welcomed Dr. Rahul Gupta to deliver keynote remarks Monday for Global Health Week 2025, “Health Without Borders: Innovation, Access, and the Future of Global Health.”
Gupta, the former West Virginia health officer, is currently president of a $5 billion AI-driven technology company. From 2021 to 2025, he was the first medical doctor to be selected to lead the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), where he managed 19 federal agencies and achieved historic progress in addressing the drug overdose crisis.
On the world health front, Dr. Gupta said global funding for health causes has dropped steadily since 2017, when the United States funded about 30 percent. The United States, along with other countries, isn’t funding health issues at the same rate, reducing the capacity to act in a crisis and raising concerns for public safety.
“Some people would say $50 billion if you look at our estimates,” Gupta said. “The point is it was a higher number than it is today for 2025 and even what it is for 2024, so numbers overall are going down and our contributions are going down.”
According to Gupta, causes like HIV and the coronavirus have been well-funded, while other issues that can devastate third-world countries don’t get the attention or budget support they should.
“If you think about it, we don’t invest a lot in things if they’re not HIV/AIDS or COVID,” Gupta said. “So, that’s a problem, or issue, or challenge in the first place of where we spend the money.”
Vaccine availability and hesitancy are real concerns in developing countries as well as the United States and other countries. What was once accepted science is being questioned, laws are being changed, and the result is a higher risk for disease outbreak.
“The progress we have made in the last 200 years or so and what will happen and what that threatens,” Gupta said. “So, this is one of the major problems we are facing.”
Turning back the tide of opioid overdose deaths is a major accomplishment across the nation. From the two-year period beginning in January of 2023, opioid overdose deaths have dropped by more than 30,000. The drop is the product of hard work, education, and making Naloxone easily accessible.
“That’s about a 30 percent drop, and if you consider just fentanyl, that’s a 40 percent drop,” Gupta said. “In the history of the United States this has never happened before.”
Gupta credited the policies of then-President Joe Biden, who removed decades-long barriers to treatment, made the reversal drugs more accessible, and made a historic investment to crack down on the border.
“It’s because we looked at supply and demand as two sides of the same coin that we were able to get these kinds of gains. One death is too many, but we’re talking tens of thousands of people alive today because of those policy changes,” Gupta said.