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The White House to ask Congress for $1.8 billion in Zika emergency funding
Obama’s fiscal 2017 budget, to be submitted to the Congress Tuesday, will include more than $1.8 billion in emergency funding to fight Zika.
The White House announced the request to cover research and planning globally shortly after CBS broadcast an interview with the U.S. President during which he declared, “there shouldn’t be panic on this — this is not something where people are going to die from.”
However, “it is something we have to take seriously,” he said.
“The good news is this is not like Ebola, people don’t die of Zika,” he said during an interview on “CBS This Morning,” Monday.
“A lot of people get it and don’t even know that they have it,” he added. “There appears to be some significant risk for pregnant women or women who are thinking about getting pregnant.
“There is much we do not yet know about Zika and its relationship to the poor health outcomes that are being reported in Zika-affected areas. We must work aggressively to investigate these outbreaks, and mitigate, to the best extent possible, the spread of the virus,” reads a White House Fact Sheet on Zika.
$1.8 Billion in Emergency Funding
The funding. if approved by Congress, would be used “to enhance our ongoing efforts to prepare for and respond to the Zika virus, both domestically and internationally,” according to the White House.
About $1.5 billion of the money would go to the Department of Health and Human Services, including nearly $830 million for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for work on “mosquito control programs.”
Another $250 million would go to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
And the rest of the money is earmarked for the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, among various other agencies, mainly for “research, rapid advanced development and commercialization of new vaccines and diagnostic tests,” said the fact sheet.
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