gayle smith, welcome to the "newshour". administration has had dozens of requests all over the world for vaccines. why are you making this announcement now? >> well, the president announced last month that we would be donating 80 million vaccines, and that came on top of a pledge from him to the american people that, once he felt that we were safely on the path to an effective vaccination program in the united ates, we would begin to share doses. this 25 million is the first tranche of those 80 million doses. >> reporter: a couple of groups, including one you used to lead, have critiqued your announcement. the first statement is from the one campaign. "the world is looking to the u.s. for global leadership and more ambition is needed." and doctors without borders said today thele 0 million doses the u.s. promises to share barely scratches the surface of what's needed. this is an emergency and the u.s. government must act with the urgency it merits. why not more urgency and why not more j generosity? >> well, i think we cert

i was just on the phone with gayle smith before this hearing commenced, talking about just that. what we are doing as the country's selection procedure takes hold and finalizes, believe me, that is an area of great focus. usaid is very focused on ensuring countries are ready to receive vaccines, so we have spent i think $75 million that has been invested in strengthening health systems to make sure that with unicef, and our hemisphere, that countries, when those vaccines come off the planes, that the recipients have been identified, especially those that need second shots because of india pulling back its supply because that, just to underscore that point you made, the issue is that covax delivered a whole set of first shots anticipating that the serum institute would continue supplying, so now you have this population that has one, but not two, which is suboptimal, to say the least. rep. lee: let me ask you about the diversity and equity inclusion strategy with usaid. i am very pleased to see that you are developing a strategy. this has been quite an uphill battle over the years

we brought in gayle smith to the state department, my old and dear friend and former boss, to help corral the overall international efforts. she'll be working closely about jeff zients and the white house task force. i think we're getting that architecture into place and i wouldn't oversell the degree to which somehow we're short of the mark on that. i think the administration requested $11.5 billion, fought for it and got it. that's a dramatic increase in resources relative to what was available and was sought by the administration, the prior administration last year, and of course that's on top of another $4 billion that we're giving to covax, as well as then the investments by the dfc and others. so we're rolling out a robust response and we're going to adapt, as you do in good disaster management practice, to what we find as we see where the pandemic is going. >> steve? >> just one thought on that. i think what we're seeing, jeremy, is a sort of -- not an underestimation of the importance of all of those things you've mentioned, but rather a sense that business as usual across the boa

your pred sesors such as rod shaw, gayle smith and mark green have prioritized this. i am interested to hear your plans to work directly with more local gardeners as well as how our legislative efforts can strengthen this. i remain very concerned about long standing institutional barriers to diversity. administrative power, i know you are working on diversity, equity and inclusion strategies for u.s. aid, so i'd like to know how we can target with you in ensuring we draw strength from the area. the agency is going to ensure that we are much better prepared for future global health risks for both moral and scientific reasons america must act with great urgency to help other countries contain the virus. the scope of the problem, as you know, is enormous. covid threatens to erase decades of antipoverty gains. this means we must make investments in the scale of the problem in front of us. we have to ensure we can help our partners achieve sustainable goals on schedule by 2030. i look forward to hearing your detailed strategy for achieving the svgs. democracies fast lining

gayle smith who is the coordinator for the global response and health security was here and i urged heruse the world health assembly annual meeting to push for reforms and get them implemented and certainly did not occur and i think it's fair to say the actions were unsuccessful. >> we are working on pushing the organization to reform. as i said it's not like flipping a switch but we are focused on doing that and we will come back to you as this moves along to see if we succeed in moving the right direction. >> thank you mr. chairman and mr. secretary for being here. i want to talk about climate i know what you are doing in the big picture i want to talk about climate within the department of the foreign service officers and throughout. i worry a bit that climate policy swings back and forth depending on who's president and to the extent that it's possible i think it's important for the department of state in p particular to and bed and its work and its training and its day-to-day operations in your conversations not just at the secretary level but at the sort of line level conversation