Tom Frieden is frustrated.
For half a year now, he and colleagues have been trying to get Americans worried about Zika virus.
From the moment Frieden's Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention realized that Zika was probably causing
horrendous birth defects in Brazil, the agency has been advising
pregnant women to stay away from Zika-affected zones and warning that
the virus would inevitably end up in the U.S.
Yet Congress has failed for five full months to
appropriate money the agency said was urgently needed back in February,
and polls show Americans were more worried about Ebola — which never
threatened the U.S. — than they are about Zika.
States need to start killing mosquitoes now if
they are to prevent outbreaks of Zika, and experiments underway to
develop new vaccines may have to end if the cash doesn't start flowing.
Puerto Rico, an American territory, has a full-blown epidemic with
thousands of verified cases and probably many thousands more that
haven't been reported.
"The president calls the situation in Puerto Rico a crisis and it is," Frieden told NBC News.
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Source: NBC News
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