Mobilizing to address Zika

For months, experts have warned that Zika — a disease linked to devastating birth defects — would spread to the United States this summer, and now it has. There were nearly 1,900 confirmed cases across the continental U.S. as of early August, and now we’ve seen the first locally transmitted cases in the Wynwood neighborhood of Miami.

I know how scary that must be for young parents, particularly those who are expecting. This week, a father wrote to me to say that his wife is 23 weeks pregnant and they are alarmed because her office is in Wynwood. And yesterday, we heard the heartbreaking news that a baby girl born with Zika-related birth defects died in Houston.

I had the chance to visit the Borinquen Medical Center in Miami yesterday, where physicians, nurses, and researchers are on the frontlines working to prevent and treat Zika. It’s a serious challenge — one that we need to mobilize to address before the virus spreads further.

Everyone has a role to play in preventing this disease. As one doctor said in our discussion, if you prevent yourself from being bitten by a mosquito, you prevent a mosquito from reproducing.

The most important thing we can all do is follow the guidelines posted at cdc.gov/zika.

It can be difficult to mobilize people about a public health challenge that hasn’t happened to them or someone they know. But this epidemic will only grow and affect more people. We need to take it seriously, and we need more resources to address it.

I am very disappointed that Congress went on recess before coming to an agreement to put resources into this fight. And I’m asking Republican leaders in the House and the Senate to call Congress back into session and immediately get funding moving — either by passing the bipartisan bill that already passed the Senate overwhelmingly or coming up with a new compromise, free of politics.

We don’t want to wake up in a year and read more stories about babies like the little girl in Houston. That is just not something we should tolerate as a country. If we pass this critical funding, we can develop rapid diagnostic testing and treatment, make sure families have what they need to keep themselves safe—including access to contraception—and even begin the hard work of developing a vaccine. And we shouldn’t rest until we get that done.