CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, has been offered the nomination for U.S. Surgeon General by the president-elect, the Washington Post and CBS confirmed.

Gupta is a practicing neurosurgeon and an assistant professor of neurosurgery. He hosts CNN's House Call program on weekends, among other duties as a medical journalist.

Gupta joined CNN in the summer of 2001 and became part of the network team covering the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City and led breaking news reporting on the anthrax attacks later that year. He has also reported from Iraq and Kuwait as an embedded correspondent with the U.S. Navy. Dr. Gupta has covered the international AIDS epidemic extensively and he contributed to CNN's Peabody Award-winning coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. It was Dr. Gupta who revealed that New Orleans' Charity Hospital was not evacuated--that 200 patients remained there for days after the storm.
Another passion for Gupta is to improve Americans' fitness by creating programs including Fit Nation.

In addition to his work for CNN, Gupta is a member of the staff and faculty of the department of neurosurgery at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. He is associate chief of neurosurgery at Emory University Hospital and Grady Memorial Hospital. Gupta received his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and a doctorate of medicine from the University of Michigan Medical Center.

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