Volume 387, Number 10030
30 April 2016
WORLD REPORT Health officials pursue Zika research and prepare to combat a formidable foe—the mosquito— despite uncertain funding. Susan Jaffe, The Lancet’s Washington correspondent, reports.
Anthony Fauci
As the number of confirmed cases of people who have contracted the Zika virus increases across the globe, the growing knowledge about this once rare infection is not reassuring. “The more we learn, the more we get concerned”, said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases….
Representative Tom Cole, the Oklahoma Republican who is chairman of the House appropriations health subcommittee, said its questions about [President Barack Obama’s $1.9 billion Zika emergency funding] request are not unreasonable….“Let us do our job to make sure we do this as prudently as possible and we will get there”, he said. “Nobody thinks this is not a serious challenge”….
While clinical research and the funding debate continues, protection from the Zika virus will depend largely on avoiding the mosquitoes that carry it….
After years of cuts in federal and local funding for mosquito control, Zika is “a pretty major wake up call to rebuild those capacities”, said Lyle Petersen, director of CDC’s division of vector-borne infectious diseases. The virus is the latest “major pathogen that has come into the Americas” in recent years—after chikungunya, dengue fever, and West Nile virus—“and it won’t be the last.” [continued here] [listen to podcast here]