White House budget director Shaun Donovan said the use of money previously provided for fighting another health crisis, the Ebola virus, was only a temporary fix for Zika funding.
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The varied outcomes of nine pregnant US women the agency has identified with Zika, as well as the hundreds of USA women that have sought out tests for the virus, underscore the angst and uncertainty that the diseases is causing as it spreads through much of the Americas, particularly when it comes to worries over severe birth defects associated with illness.
A birth defect characterised by undersize heads and poor brain development has been reported in six nations, led by Brazil with more than 1,000 Zika-linked cases confirmed by the WHO.
The National Institutes of Health is slated to start testing Zika vaccines in September, but a successful vaccine could be years away, officials said.
In Salvador, there were roughly 50 reported cases of Guillain-Barre in July alone, far more than would typically be expected, Dr. Albert Ko, a tropical disease expert from Yale University who is studying Zika in the coastal city of Salvador, recently told a research symposium.
In January, the state’s health department confirmed the first case in an Arkansan.
“I take no joy in suggesting that Republicans are going to look back on this time that they’ve had to act on the Zika virus and deeply regret it”, Earnest added. Zika can also be transmitted through sexual contact, and it’s estimated that 40 million people will travel between the US and countries with Zika outbreaks. While it seems unlikely that Congress will approve the supplemental request, now that the White House has made the transfer of Ebola funds, the administration said the Ebola money would still need to be replaced because Ebola hasn’t been vanquished and remains a threat.
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The findings, published on Wednesday in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, are based on a large trove of computed tomography, or CT images, done in infants whose mothers are believed to have had Zika infections during pregnancy. Majority of the infants also had other problems in brain structures such as swelling, brain fold problems, underdeveloped brain parts and anomalies in the nerve fiber-protecting myelin. They’re all related to global travel. Many who become infected with the Zika virus will not even know that they have contracted the disease because symptoms are often mild. “Now that the World Health Organization has announced an end to the Ebola public health emergency, it is time to reprioritize and use these funds for today’s challenges”.
