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Tag: zika funding
Zika Concern Leading Constituents To Push GOP Action

Zika Concern Leading Constituents To Push GOP Action

Concerns over the Zika virus are leading constituents in affected areas to push their Republican members of Congress for action. This is not the firs22t time there have been significant calls for action on Zika, but this past summer, Congressional Republicans left for a seven week recess without doing anything to address the growing crisis.

Now, amid calls for action from residents in hard-hit states like Florida, momentum may be building to force action.

Earlier this year, the White House asked for $1.9 billion in funding to fight the virus. House Republicans politicized the issue, arguing that the White House still had money left over from the fight against Ebola. Shortly thereafter, Senate Republicans offered $1.1 billion, which the White House accepted, but was then blocked by Senate Democrats. The bill offered by Republicans did not provide funding for family planning, as Zika is a virus that can be transmitted sexually, and even had provisions to defund parts of Obamacare. It also would have reversed a federal ban on displaying Confederate flags in national cemeteries.

Ultimately, the summer Congressional recess started with no action on Zika; both sides blamed each other.

Now, however, Politicoreports House Republicans are catching heat for refusing action on Zika funding initially. Floridians Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Rep. Carlos Curbelo are among those Republicans pushing their party for action. Ros-Lehtinen asked Speaker Paul Ryan to convene an emergency session to pass a bill on Zika funds. Rep. Dennis Ross is among those Republicans hoping the GOP decides to fully fund President Obama’s request for $1.9 billion in Zika funding.

Democrats, for their part, are seemingly attempting to use the heat against Republicans to push for even more. In a phone call with reporters Thursday, Rep. Gwen Graham said, according to Politico, “Florida is ground zero for Zika in the U.S. and it’s time for Marco Rubio, Rick Scott and Congressional Republicans to quit playing politics and protect our state.”

Media within the state are also placing the blame squarely at the GOP’s feet.

Zika’s reach has grown over the summer months, with the first native cases in Florida multiplying through July. Now, there are over 400 cases in Florida, including in populous Miami.

Curbelo told Politico that his office has been flooded by calls from physicians who are trying to manage Zika fears from their patients. “There is so much anger and frustration in our country because most Americans feel they cannot count on the government to do very simple things… Congress has to show competence — and funding a response to a serious public health threat seems to me a very simple stand for ‘competence,'” he said.

Photo: An edes aegypti mosquito is seen inside a test tube as part of a research on preventing the spread of the Zika virus and other mosquito-borne diseases at a control and prevention center in Guadalupe, neighbouring Monterrey, Mexico, in this March 8, 2016 file photo. REUTERS/Daniel Becerril/Files

Democrats Urge Zika Funding Vote, Republicans Unmoved

Democrats Urge Zika Funding Vote, Republicans Unmoved

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Forty-one Democratic U.S. senators on Thursday urged Republican congressional leaders to summon lawmakers back from their summer recess to vote on emergency funding to combat the Zika virus, but Republicans blamed Democrats for the inaction in Congress.

House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan accused Democrats of obstructing the funding and said President Barack Obama’s administration has failed to spend existing funds to prevent the spread of the mosquito-borne virus.

The latest finger-pointing in Congress indicated there was little chance lawmakers would cut short their seven-week summer break to vote on Zika funding.

Concern over the threat from Zika, which can cause a birth defect called microcephaly marked by small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies, has risen since Florida authorities last week detected the first signs of local transmission in the continental United States.

Zika funding remains stalled six months after Obama asked the Republican-led Congress to approve $1.9 billion in emergency funds.

Forty-one Democrats in the 100-seat Senate responded with a letter urging Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring Congress back into session to consider funding legislation.

“It is simply unacceptable that efforts to counter the spread of Zika and develop a vaccine are being held hostage by Republican partisanship,” the Democrats wrote.

A $1.1 billion compromise failed after House of Representatives Republicans attached language that would place restrictions on abortion and defund part of Obama’s signature 2010 healthcare law.

Senate Democrats, who blocked the measure twice before Congress left Washington last month, want Republicans to agree on a new funding measure that drops those provisions, a step Republicans reject.

“We need the White House and Senate Democrats to drop politics and put the public’s health first. We hope for a change of heart, and soon,” Ryan wrote in an opinion piece in the USA Today newspaper.

McConnell spokesman Don Stewart invited Democrats to allow the current bill to pass by unanimous consent at a perfunctory session on Friday.

The Obama administration has been siphoning money dedicated to other health issues to provide stopgap funding for Zika efforts but said on Wednesday that most will be gone in the coming weeks.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) holds a news conference after a Republican House caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington January 6, 2016.  REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

EXCLUSIVE: When Republicans Sabotage Zika Funding, Local Health Departments Suffer

EXCLUSIVE: When Republicans Sabotage Zika Funding, Local Health Departments Suffer

As Congress continues to stall on funding Zika research, local health departments are bearing the brunt of their inaction.

Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control shifted $44 million of its federal funding towards research on the mosquito-borne disease after Congress failed to allocate any funds itself.

But since this money is normally funneled down to local health departments for emergency preparedness, city and statewide offices have lost critical funds they need in order to prevent the spread of Zika at the local level.

New York City, home to a confirmed 310 cases of the infectious disease, lost $1 million in emergency funds from the CDC — a number that deputy commissioner of emergency preparedness Marisa Raphael predicts could impact the city’s capacity to conduct lab testing as well as surveillance activities like tracking and interviewing Zika patients.

“It’s very painstaking, time-intensive work, but so critical for the ultimate goal of spreading disease,” she said in an interview. “You need people with that technical expertise to investigate outbreaks on any given day.”

Raphael added that the “highly problematic” cut could affect the department’s ability to sustain its existing Zika monitoring networks while also addressing the competing demands of other potential outbreaks.

House Republicans have repeatedly stalled a bipartisan Senate bill that sought to allocate $1.1 billion towards research on the virus. When the House passed another $1.1 billion plan in June, Senate Democrats objected to “poison pill” provisions that would have prohibited allocating funds to Planned Parenthood for fighting the virus, weakened pesticide restrictions, and, curiously, ended the ban on displaying Confederate flags in national cemeteries.

Louisiana, meanwhile, experienced a $700,000 slash in its CDC allocation — known officially as Public Health Emergency Preparedness, or PHEP. In past months, about a quarter of the state’s PHEP money has been used towards fighting the virus, through measures like a “Tip and Toss” campaign meant to keep mosquitoes out of residential areas.

Dr. Frank Welch, Louisiana’s medical director for community preparedness, said the reduction in funding means that the state’s already cash-strapped health department is struggling to fill empty positions.

“Before Zika, we were already really strapped with our ability to respond ourselves with boots on the ground,” Welch said. “When you’re already down to just a few and you can’t fill those positions you had before — when you’re down to nine instead of 11 — that’s really just a critical amount.”

While the private sector has taken up some work in treating cases, Welch explained that these medical providers tend to focus only on treating patients. Louisiana’s plan, on the other hand, looks to educate travelers returning from Zika-stricken countries and keep mosquitoes at bay in the state’s swampy terrain.

And when it comes to testing pregnant women twice for the virus—a federal recommendation—Welch said it would impossible for the Louisiana health department to carry out this measure on its own.

Dr. Oscar Alleyne, a senior adviser at the National Association of City & County Health Officials, conducted a survey in May that found the CDC reallocation would cause a majority of departments to lose between 5 and 10 percent of their funding. Survey respondents said that preparation measures, supplies, and staffing would be most adversely affected by the cuts.

“We’re still dealing with the fact that there hasn’t been any movement from the congressional side on providing necessary resources,” Alleyne said. “So that still maintains a degree of concerns.”

True to the survey, the Florida Health Department — which serves over half of the nine U.S. cities estimated to be at highest risk of an outbreak — lost over $2.3 million as a result of congressional inaction. It’s now unable to implement enhancements to its preparedness measures, a spokesperson said.

South Carolina, meanwhile, lost about seven percent of the budget for its Office of Public Health Preparedness, which is tasked with preparing for and responding to emerging infectious diseases like Zika, according to a spokesperson.

“You have infrastructure cuts and then you have to modify infrastructure to deal with the pending threat — which we are sure is not a matter of ‘when,’” Alleyne said. Mosquito season is now in full peak.

Some local health departments have received money to fight Zika from alternative sources: New York’s mayor, for instance, announced a three-year, multi-million dollar plan to address the virus.But Alleyne said that these amounts are “a drop in the bucket” compared to the $44 million that they have lost — not to mention the $1.1 billion in federal research funding.

For his part, Louisiana’s Welch said that the congressional stall shows that public health emergencies like Zika cannot wait for politicians to observe a threat and then fund it.

“Things like this will continue to happen,” he said. “We might be better served if we had a more global view, realized the importance beforehand, and funded it in a way where we were prepared.”

 

Photo: Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are seen inside Oxitec laboratory in Campinas, Brazil, February 2, 2016. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker/File Photo

Senate Democrats Seek New Deal On Zika Funding Fight

Senate Democrats Seek New Deal On Zika Funding Fight

This article was updated at 1:29 PM to reflect the failed Senate vote on $1.1 billion in Zika funding.

U.S. lawmakers deadlocked over funding to fight the Zika virus on Tuesday, as Senate Democrats blocked a Republican proposal they said fell short of the challenge posed by the mosquito-borne virus and hurt other health priorities.

Amid political recriminations by both parties, the Republican plan to provide $1.1 billion in funding to combat Zika, which had already passed the House of Representatives, failed to get the 60 votes needed in the Senate to clear a procedural hurdle. The vote was 52 in favor and 48 against on a mostly party-line vote.

It was unclear when Congress would revisit the issue. Democrats urged bipartisan talks, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, said lawmakers would address the matter again sometime after the July 4 national holiday next week.

Both sides warned the other that there could be a political price to pay in an election year for stalling on Zika funding, with the summer mosquito season under way and with it the threat of the virus spreading.

“Here we are, in an utterly absurd position, playing political games as this public health crisis mounts here in our country,” McConnell said.

The Zika virus, which has swept through the Americas and Caribbean since last fall, has been linked to thousands of cases of microcephaly, a rare birth defect, in Brazil, as well as to neurological disorders. It has been declared a global health emergency by the World Health Organization.

There have not yet been any cases reported of local transmission of the Zika virus in the continental United States, but there have been 820 cases that were acquired from travel to areas with active Zika outbreaks, or through sexual transmission. There have been more than 1,800 cases of Zika infection reported in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory in the Caribbean.

Health experts expect local transmission to occur in the continental United States with warmer weather.

Democrats have been urging Republicans for months to agree to Zika funding. The Republican plan would have funded mosquito control efforts by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, as well as vaccine research by the National Institutes of Health, and money for community health centers in areas that are experiencing the highest rates of Zika transmission.

But Democrats complained that Republicans locked them out of drafting the $1.1 billion funding plan, which would have made $750 million in budget cuts elsewhere. The Republican plan, rushed through the House last week, would have taken money from battling the Ebola virus as well as from funds set aside for implementing the Obamacare health insurance program in U.S. territories.

The Senate last month agreed to a bipartisan bill allocating the same amount – $1.1 billion – to fight Zika, but without cutting any other programs.

 

DISPUTE OVER PLANNED PARENTHOOD

Democrats were especially angry that the Republican proposal that failed on Tuesday would not allow funding to go to private entities such as the women’s healthcare provider Planned Parenthood, although the Zika virus can be sexually transmitted.

“I don’t know what universe (McConnell) is living in. What does he think, we’re all stupid, the American people are dumb? They’re not. They understand what’s going here,” Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid declared after the vote.

President Barack Obama, a Democrat, had vowed to veto the plan, which falls short of his $1.9 billion request, if it ever arrived on his desk.

Republicans charged that the Democrats were blocking the measure mainly because it included no funding for Planned Parenthood, a non-profit group that Democrats and Republicans have been skirmishing over for years. It provides health exams, screening and contraception services to women.

Republicans have previously sought to cut off all federal funding to the group, which also provides abortions. Planned Parenthood says abortions make up just three percent of its work.

Republican Senator John Thune, referring to Planned Parenthood, charged on Monday that Democrats were more interested in pleasing a what he called a special interest group than in acting on Zika.

U.S. health officials have concluded that Zika infections in pregnant women can cause microcephaly, a birth defect marked by small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies. The WHO has said there is strong scientific consensus that Zika can also cause Guillain-Barre, a rare neurological syndrome that causes temporary paralysis in adults.

 

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and David Morgan; Editing by Bill Trott and Frances Kerry)

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Photo: A 4-month-old baby born with microcephaly is held by his mother in front of their house in Olinda, near Recife, Brazil, February 11, 2016. REUTERS/Nacho Doce/File Photo