In the continental United States, what public health officials warned for months was imminent is now a reality: Zika is spreading here. But that doesn’t seem to be happening. Last month, a House appropriations committee proposed a funding bill that would have slashed money to the Title X Family Planning Program. In fact, according to a recent survey, Zika is on the minds of most Americans this summer, but many don’t have the information they need.
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“Republicans and Democrats on Thursday continued bashing each other for a lack of congressional action to combat the Zika virus”.
“The situation is getting critical”, he said.
In the midst of this enigmatic fear, however, we know a few things for certain.
And we also know this: We need a sizable infusion of federal and state dollars to put what we know into action.
Laura Goodhue, executive director of the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, the state organization’s lobbying and advocacy arm, emphasized that Planned Parenthood health centers are active in trying to stem the Zika outbreak. That’s what happened 30 years ago with HIV/AIDS.
“Congress needs to do its job”, Obama said at a press conference after a meeting with officials at the Pentagon. First, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognizes three primary modes of Zika transmission: mosquito bites, sexual transmission, and mother-to-fetus transmission. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told the Editorial Board on Sunday that the department, so far, hasn’t received one. The research team of which he is a member, which includes partners at other universities and local health departments, also has established a large-scale survey for the Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, which are the species most likely to be involved in transmission in North Carolina.
Zika normally causes a mild illness but can cause a birth defect called microcephaly in which babies are born with abnormally small heads and underdeveloped brains.
The president noted that there are more than 1,800 travel-related cases of Zika in the United States, some 40 American soldiers are infected, and almost 500 pregnant women have the disease.
The International Olympic Committee ignored pleas by scientists and public health experts to postpone or move the games with what amounted to a claim that the event was too big to fail.
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Congress left for a seven-week summer recess without approving the $1.9 billion President Barack Obama requested in February to combat the virus. I wrote to the agencies seeking answers on why they were slow to distribute Zika funding. Good management of funds is called into question when the executive branch seeks emergency funding from Congress for every new public health concern, without even seeming to consider whether money left over from the previous public health concern could be used for the new one. So HHS chose to find some political benefit in its role in the Zika crisis anyway. Your children and grandchildren will pay the price for inaction. Mike King is a journalist and author of the recently released book, “A Spirit of Charity: Restoring the Bond between America and Its Public Hospitals”.
