Underfunding Our Zika Response Efforts Will Only Hurt Us In The Long Run.
I hosted a Zika roundtable discussion at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. This roundtable brought together nearly three dozen experts from government, academia, and research fields to discuss the U.S. response to the Zika virus.
What was clear from our discussion is that we need to fully fund our Zika response at $1.9 billion, the amount the scientific community, public health experts, and Administration officials have advised us is needed to address the virus.
Last week, the Senate voted to fund $1.1 billion of the request, just over half of the Administration’s request.
Hold the applause.
A plan put forth by House Republicans only offers a third of the President’s request-$622 million, but it would be paid for out of remaining Ebola funds that are still being used to monitor and prevent another disastrous Ebola outbreak.
Underfunding our Zika response efforts will only hurt us in the long run. To date, there have been 544 reported travel-associated Zika cases in the continental United States, including 17 in Maryland. And as we continue moving toward the summer months and the height of mosquito season, the number of Zika infections in this country will undoubtedly rise. The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that between three to four million people in the Americas will contract Zika within a year.
The impact of the Zika virus cannot be understated. There is a common refrain among scientists and experts studying Zika: there is much they still do not know about Zika and what they do know is worrisome.
New research has shown that the Zika virus can cause a number of previously undetected medical conditions, especially with regard to pregnant women. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed the link between Zika infection during pregnancy and severe fetal brain defects, like microcephaly. . And the WHO recently concluded that Zika can cause Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a rare condition that attacks the body’s nervous system, causing muscle weakness and even paralysis.
Direct health impacts aside, recent economic modeling developed by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Yale School of Public Health, and the National School of Tropical Medicine shows an extraordinary cost associated with the virus.
Researchers determined that if just 2 percent of people in the six Southern states most at risk for Zika contracted the virus, we could be looking at more than $2 billion in associated costs. And that $2 billion does not take into account cases outside of the six most at-risk states or business disruptions, all of which may occur in the event of local transmission.
Moreover, estimates show that a child born with microcephaly, as a result of a mother having contracted Zika while pregnant, may end up costing that family more than $10 million over the course of that child’s life. And that is just one child, in one city, in one state. As of May 18, 2016, the CDC is tracking 157 pregnant women in the United States with laboratory evidence of possible Zika infection.
There is no question that the aggregate costs of not dealing with the Zika virus properly would be far greater than the total requested $1.9 billion.
We need to stop looking at the $1.9 billion as a cost, but rather as an investment; an investment in the long-term health security, welfare and productivity of all people at risk of contracting the virus, particularly babies born over the next year.
Numerous agencies and organizations, such as the National Institutes of Health, Food and Drug Administration, and several others in my home state of Maryland, are already working on their response. Alongside the President, they have put forward a plan over the next several months to begin developing a vaccine, to improve our diagnostic tests, and to develop new tools to reduce the populations of Zika-carrying mosquitoes.
The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), for example, is one of several NIH Institutes making the Zika virus research a top priority, and subsequently are engaging with experts in the field to solicit research on how the pathology of the virus, and the most effect ways to diagnose, prevent and treat it. In April, NIDCR funded a study in the detection of Zika virus in saliva, in hopes of creating a rapid Zika virus diagnostic test. But this type of effort — and countless others- cannot be sustained without sufficient funding.
But we also need the full $1.9 billion to make sure that our state and local health departments — the front lines in our fight against Zika — have the resources they need to fight against the virus.
In April, administration officials announced that they would transfer $589 million in existing funds to jump-start the Zika response while waiting for Congressional action. Included in that transfer was $44 million dollars in CDC funding that helps state and local governments address public health emergencies. As a result, state and local health department budgets are stretched thin and this loss of funding has had an immediate impact on their ability to fully address Zika. New York City’s Health Department, for example, lost $1.1 million in preparedness funding — gutting its efforts to build a Zika preparedness infrastructure.
Suffice it to say, this is an “all-hands-on-deck” emergency and we cannot implement and sustain an adequate response without fully funding the President’s request of $1.9 billion. This is something that is solvable. We do not need to panic about Zika, but we need to take it seriously. Congress should demonstrate its commitment to protecting the health and welfare of the American people, including those who are unborn, by fully funding our Zika response at $1.9 billion.
