Ebola Response Needs Fast $6.2 Billion From Congress, Obama Says
By Angela Greiling Keane
diciembre 02, 2014 1:26 PM EST
President Barack Obama today is using a visit the federal facility where an Ebola vaccine is being developed to urge congressional approval of $6.2 billion in emergency spending to fund treatment and prevention efforts in the U.S. and in Africa.
While White House Ebola coordinator Ron Klain delivered an update to Obama saying the U.S. is better prepared for a domestic outbreak than it was two months ago, “virtually every initiative under way requires immediate, additional funding to be continued or advanced,” the administration said in a statement.
The Ebola Scourge
Obama today plans to tour the National Institutes of Health vaccine research center in Bethesda, Maryland. His visit follows the publication of results of initial clinical trials on an Ebola vaccine that produced responses from the immune system and didn’t raise safety concerns.
“Americans won’t be completely safe until we have ended the outbreak in West Africa,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.
The World Health Organization reported today that there have been 17,111 Ebola cases and 6,055 deaths during the epidemic this year. Nearly all of those have been in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
In the past two months, the U.S. has increased its hospital bed capacity for Ebola patients to 53 beds at 35 hospitals from eight beds at three facilities, according to the White House.
Two people, both of whom contracted the illness in Africa, have died because of the Ebola virus in the U.S. Another eight people, two of whom contracted it in the U.S. while treating a patient, have been treated for Ebola and survived.
While some Republican lawmakers have criticized the administration’s Ebola response and urged close scrutiny of how they money is spent, none has publicly come out in opposition to the funding.
Obama’s request includes goals to speed testing of vaccines and drugs overseas. Johnson & Johnson, based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London-based GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK) are working on Ebola vaccines, as are NewLink Genetics Corp. (NLNK) and Novavax Inc. (NVAX)
To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Greiling Keane in Washington at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at [email protected] Joe Sobczyk
