Want to America Great Again? Fund Zika Prevention!
 Zika Symptoms. From CDC. CDC Responds to Zika; Zika 101
Before adjourning for the remainder of the summer, the Senate killed the Zika Funding Bill, even though the epidemic is raging through South America and the Caribbean, including the Virgin Islands Puerto Rico, US Territories. In the mainland US, all of the over 1400 cases diagnosed to date have been linked to travel to one of these areas currently impacted. The CDC has requested funding to be spent developing vaccines, educating the public and healthcare workers about the disease, amplifying mosquito control programs, and assisting other nations to attain control.
In May, after a request by President Obama for $1.9 billion, the US Senate passed a bill to provide $1.1 billion for Zika prevention. However, House Republicans sabotaged the bill by attaching provisions to defund parts of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), overturning clean water regulations, restricting abortion availability, and attempted to remove the ban on flying the Confederate flag in federal cemeteries. On return to the Senate, Democrats could not support the mutilated version, and so Congress recessed without meeting their responsibility to protect the health and welfare of the citizen of the United States. By every indicator of seriousness, Zika has proven to be much more significant than had been thought last year at this time. It is transmitted through more routes of exposure; it has caused a wider and more significant epidemic; it causes more kinds of problems; and it remains alive and active for a longer period after infection With an affinity for nervous system cells, the virus’s most devastating impact is to cause of horrible birth defects, including microcephaly (small brains) in fetuses. While for many who are not pregnant, the Zika virus causes no symptoms or sometimes mild symptoms (e.g. rash, headache, fever), it has been shown to rarely cause Guillain-Berré Syndrome, a sudden paralysis that is usually, though not always, temporary. Zika has shocked virologists as it is the only example of a mosquito-borne infection that has proven to also be transmitted sexually. Sexually transmitted diseases are particularly difficult to prevent because the risk behavior is essentially universal. Warnings to use condoms or abstinence just are not well followed. Without a vaccine available, the CDC and other public health agencies are forced to advice women who are pregnant or may become pregnant not to travel to affected countries, and to avoid mosquito bites. More than that, because Zika is also an STD, the CDC advises women at risk from exposure because their sexual partner may have traveled to Zika affected areas that their partners should use condoms or avoid sex, and further suggests that some couples may opt to defer pregnancy. Look at the table of CDC recommendations to see how disruptive, frightening and feeble current guidance is. This is a disease that needs funding for vaccine-based prevention. |
From CDC. Zika website
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The Zika news just keeps getting worse. Although not unexpected, it is still disturbing that public health officials in Florida suspect that two people have been diagnosed with what is likely to be locally acquired Zika occurred in Florida this July. There is concern that if there are infected mosquitos in an area, there can be a localized outbreak. Another case that is being investigated in Utah suggests that the virus may have been transmitted from an ill parent to a care-giving child. This potential route of transmission amplifies the concern that there can be occupational transmission cases to nurses, doctors, and other healthcare workers.
How perverse that Republicans would delay the funding to help fight this virus that will impact the country for years! How even more perverse that they would contaminate the bill with efforts to decrease healthcare and abortion availability! As Tom Frieden, Director of the CDC testified, “this is no way to fight epidemics”. |