On Monday, the president announced he would ask Congress to approve roughly $1.8 billion to fight Zika at home and overseas.
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While the exact correlation between a Zika infection and microcephaly is still not clear, officials believe that pregnant women who are bitten by infected mosquitoes may be transmitting the virus to their fetuses through the placenta. While most people experience either mild or no symptoms, Zika is suspected of causing a devastating birth defect – babies born with abnormally small heads – and pregnant Americans are urged to avoid travel to affected areas.
Around $200 million would go toward vaccine research and the development of diagnostic tests, while $210 million would be provided for an “Urgent and Emerging Threat Fund” and $335 million would be given to the U.S. Agency for International Development to provide foreign aid to affected countries.
The cash will visit vaccine research programmes and mosquito control attempts among other initiatives. Zika is actively being transmitted in Puerto Rico and other warmer territories.
“The good news is this is not like Ebola, people don’t die of Zika – a lot of people get it and don’t even know that they have it”, President Obama told CBS News in an interview that aired Monday.
The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have reported 50 laboratory-confirmed cases among United States travellers from December 2015-February 5 this year. “We do think it’s important for people who are pregnant or may be pregnant to be aware of the risks and for their sexual partners to be aware of the risk as well”.
President Obama said Americans should take the virus seriously but not panic, comparing it to the outbreak of the Ebola virus in 2014.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Zika can spread through those body fluids, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
Most of the cash would go to well being officers for things like enhancing laboratory testing capability, schooling and establishing speedy response groups. Command center personnel also have the resources to ship diagnostic kits, samples and specimens and emergency-response personnel to Zika hotspots. Pedro Pierluisi said Monday that the money also would be used for prevention and detection.
The U.S. has already seen dozens of Zika cases, nearly exclusively in people who travelled to Latin America. Officials seem less concerned with a proposed connection between Zika and Guillain-Barré syndrome, an immune disorder that can lead to paralysis; though Schuchat said they are keeping their “eyes open”.
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The World Health Organization has declared a global medical emergency to combat Zika and individual countries and regions are beginning to mobilize. She said Florida’s tropical climate is a prime location for the mosquito species that spreads Zika. Since then, it has spread rapidly throughout Southand CentralAmerica and the Caribbean, carried by the notoriously pesky Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Some of the emergency funding would assist the federal government put together for any comparable native transmission of Zika.
