Obama names surgeon general

President Obama will announce Dr. Regina Benjamin to be U.S. surgeon general in a Rose Garden ceremony Monday morning, according to a White House aide.

Obama’s nomination of Benjamin comes months after speculation reached a fever pitch that CNN commentator Sanjay Gupta would fill the post.

According to the MacArthur Foundation, Benjamin founded the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic “to serve the Gulf Coast fishing community of Bayou La Batre, Ala., a village of approximately 2,500 residents devastated twice in the past decade by Hurricanes Georges, in 1998, and Katrina, in 2005.”

“Despite scarce resources, Benjamin has painstakingly rebuilt her clinic after each disaster and set up networks to maintain contact with patients scattered across multiple evacuation sites,” the website biography says.