Tag Archives: Funding

Special Report: Thousands face lead hazards as Trump eyes budget cuts

MD Chowdhury sits in his living room with his wife, Nazneen Fatema, and daughters, Nafia, 2, and Nabiha (R), 7, during an interview about lead safety improvements made to their lead contaminated home in Buffalo, New York March 30, 2017. REUTERS/Lindsay DeDario

By M.B. Pell, Joshua Schneyer and Andy Sullivan

BUFFALO, New York (Reuters) – Laicie Manzella lived in a rundown house on Buffalo’s east side when three of her children tested with dangerously high levels of lead in their blood. Her oldest son suffered nosebleeds, body rashes and a developmental disorder requiring speech therapy.

Checking her apartment, county health inspectors found 15 lead violations, all linked to old paint in this blue collar city plagued by lead poisoning.

A Reuters investigation found at least four city zip codes here where 40 percent of children tested from 2006 to 2014 had high lead levels, making Buffalo among the most dangerous lead hotspots in America. The rate of high lead tests in these areas was far worse – eight times greater – than that found among children across Flint, Michigan, during that city’s recent water crisis.

Federal support has helped Manzella and other families in Buffalo and beyond. This month, her family moved into a gleaming, lead-free apartment renovated by a local nonprofit with funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

This type of assistance may not last much longer. President Donald Trump is advocating deep federal budget cuts that would sap billions from programs used by state and local governments to protect children from the lifelong health impacts of lead exposure.

“If they go and snatch these funds away, where are we going to get help from?” Manzella said.

It’s a question being asked in cities across the United States bracing for cuts in programs that identify and eradicate lead poisoning hazards. Awareness of lead poisoning escalated following Flint’s crisis, and more recently from Reuters reporting that has identified more than 3,300 areas with childhood lead poisoning rates at least double those found in the Michigan city.

Some of the areas slated to be hit hardest supported Trump in November’s election, though he lost Erie County, where Buffalo is the county seat.

At least eight of the nine federal agencies sharing responsibility for lead poisoning prevention face potential budget cuts. But the heaviest lifting falls to HUD, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump’s budget would cut at least $4.7 billion from programs at HUD and the EPA that support healthy housing and lead pollution cleanup efforts, a Reuters analysis found. Funding for a CDC program that assists states with poisoning prevention is uncertain.

Cuts would be felt across the country. The Trump administration would eliminate a $27 million program that trains private contractors on lead removal, and a $21 million program that funds lead abatement projects in Alaska, Illinois, Ohio, Oklahoma and California. It would kill a program that provided funds to a Rhode Island nonprofit to upgrade housing, and end a $970 million affordable-housing program that has fixed up dilapidated homes in hundreds of U.S. cities, including Flint.

If the cuts clear Congress, some experts fear the fight against lead could stall out for years.

“We are dooming future generations,” said Dr. Gale Burstein, health commissioner in Erie County. “Exposure to high lead levels causes brain damage to kids, learning disabilities and behavioral challenges.”

Instead of saving money, the cost of inaction could spiral, Burstein said. More children would be afflicted by learning disabilities and other neurological problems, leaving localities to foot the bill for treatment programs.

White House officials declined to comment.

Decades of lead abatement have sharply curbed childhood lead levels across the United States. But studies have shown no level of lead in the blood is safe, and poisoning persists in thousands of locales.

PINPOINTING HOTSPOTS

In December, Reuters used previously undisclosed data obtained from 21 states to pinpoint nearly 3,000 U.S. neighborhoods where poisoning rates among tested children were at least twice as high as in Flint.

Reporters have since obtained testing results covering eight additional states and expanded data from two more, including New York, Louisiana, New Jersey, Virginia, New Hampshire and California. The new data reveal another 449 neighborhoods with rates that high.

The communities stretch from affluent neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area to an impoverished quarter of Shreveport, Louisiana, to a rural town in Salem County, New Jersey, where Trump won 56 percent of the vote in November.

The data paints a partial picture. Reuters has not obtained neighborhood-level testing results for 21 states and the District of Columbia. These areas cited privacy concerns or said they do not have the data.

Still, the available results show the toxic metal remains a threat to millions of children.

Federal programs fund testing for children, cleanup of industrial lead hazards and poisoning-awareness efforts. Other programs require inspections or abatement in housing built before 1978, when lead was banned from residential paint.

The few planned funding increases under Trump may not be as beneficial as they appear. HUD’s Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control Program is slated to receive a $20 million boost, but the agency has proposed eliminating $4.1 billion worth of grant programs local officials say play a bigger role in reducing risks.

“I think you’re going to see more children, not fewer children, exposed to lead,” said Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat who has sought more funding for lead-abatement programs on the Senate subcommittee that funds HUD.

Congress, which controls federal spending, may not go along. A spokeswoman for Senator Susan Collins described lead-based hazards as “one of the most prevalent health issues facing children today.” She said the Maine Republican would use her position as head of the subcommittee that controls HUD’s budget to oppose cuts.

BUFFALO A HOTBED FOR LEAD

Buffalo has long fought a legacy of lead contamination. Blood data shows 17 city zip codes where the rate of tested children with high lead levels was at least double that of Flint – about 8,000 children over nine years.

“Nobody’s talking about Buffalo as ground zero for the lead problem, but when it comes to the levels of lead that’s been identified in children, it’s higher than what you see in Flint,” said Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz.

Buffalo’s problem stems from a simple equation: Old houses plus high poverty equal lead poisoning. Older homes are often blanketed with lead paint, and the water pipes and fixtures typically contain lead. In poorer neighborhoods, homes are frequently neglected, leading to exposure from peeling paint or dust. Fifty-eight percent of the city’s housing was built before 1940; nearly 40 percent of residents live below the poverty line.

Still, Buffalo and Erie County have made progress. In 2007, three city zip codes had 50 percent of tested children with high lead levels. By 2014, the prevalence in those zip codes dropped to an improved, but still worrisome, 30 percent.

Progress came thanks to millions of dollars in federal assistance flowing to local programs.

From 2012 through 2016, Buffalo was granted $27.7 million from the now-threatened HUD HOME Investment and Partnerships Program. HUD’s blessing brought far greater resources to bear, with city, county and nonprofits using the grant to attract another $200 million to revitalize or replace 1,125 housing units, making them all lead-safe.

Among those helped: The Chowdhurys, a family of five who moved to the east side of Buffalo in 2010, settling in a neighborhood with one of the highest lead poisoning rates in the country.

Within two months, their one-year-old daughter, Nabiha, was found to have a lead level about twice that of the elevated threshold set by the CDC, five micrograms per deciliter. Any child at or above CDC’s threshold warrants a public health response, the agency says.

MD Chowdhury, a restaurant waiter, and his wife, Nazneen Fatema, didn’t know how their daughter was poisoned or how to help her, but Buffalo and Erie County did.

Local officials dispatched housing inspectors, nurses and contractors to identify and repair the lead hazards in the family’s home. Replacing the lead-paint coated windows and siding and installing a new roof cost about $40,000. Federal grant programs footed the bill.

Erie County’s Health Department receives $244,000 a year from the CDC to help fund five full-time employees and three part-time employees who refer at-risk children for testing, investigate the causes of lead poisoning and conduct educational home visits. Those staffers helped the family.

Chowdhury also took EPA-funded classes on how to safely remove lead-based-paint so he could do additional work himself.

Two years ago, the couple had another daughter. She has never tested high.

“Without these programs, it’s hard to know about lead, and my income is not enough to do all of the work we needed,” Chowdhury said.

Trump’s budget proposal would kill much of the funding that helped the family through its ordeal.

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said the case illustrates the larger peril of potential funding cuts. “There would be people who would fall through the cracks,” he said.

CARSON’S MIXED MESSAGE

While working as a pediatric neurosurgeon in Baltimore, Dr. Benjamin Carson saw the irreversible damage lead can cause in the brains of children living in substandard housing.

At his confirmation hearing in February to serve as Trump’s secretary of HUD, Carson told the Senate Banking Committee he would be “vigorous” in his efforts to reduce the tally of hundreds of thousands of poisoned children across the country.

“I’m looking forward to, you know, the Safe and Healthy Homes Program at HUD and enhancing that program very significantly,” Carson said.

But even Carson’s requested $20 million increase for HUD’s lead removal program falls short of the $29 million his agency says is needed to comply with a new policy that requires lead remediation of HUD properties where children have tested above the CDC threshold.

Other housing programs that play a bigger, if more indirect, role in protecting children’s health would be eliminated altogether.

Among them: the $125 million Choice Neighborhoods program, which provided funding to remove lead paint from New Orleans’ aging Iberville housing project, and the $970 million HOME Partnerships program, which helped the Chowdhurys clean up their house in Buffalo.

The biggest casualty could be HUD’s $3 billion Community Development Block Grant program.

Local officials use CDBG grants to fund projects from curb construction to rehabilitating old housing, with only a small portion, $10 million, directly used for lead safety standards in the most recent fiscal year.

But CDGB is crucial to poisoning prevention, since housing-related projects it helps are required to meet HUD guidelines for lead safety, said Marion McFadden, who oversaw HUD’s grant programs under President Barack Obama.

“If (cuts are) enacted, it would be a huge step backward,” McFadden said.

CDBG funds went toward lead-paint removal in cities including Milwaukee, Syracuse and Shreveport, Louisiana. All three had neighborhoods with documented lead poisoning rates at least twice Flint’s.

BUDGET CUTS IN AMISH COUNTRY

Health officials in the small city of York, Pennsylvania, two hours west of Philadelphia in Amish country, know how budget cuts like this can play out.

The city and surrounding York County, where Trump won 70 percent of the vote in November, have a serious lead poisoning problem. From 2005 through 2014, at least 30 percent of children tested in all but one of York’s census tracts had elevated lead exposure, according to CDC data. In one census tract, more than half of all tested children had high lead levels.

Trump lost the city of York, but other patches of the county hit hard by lead poisoning, including the borough of Red Lion, where 21 percent of children tested had high levels, overwhelmingly supported him.

In the mid 1990s, York had seven full-time and part-time employees working in the city’s lead prevention program who conducted screening and investigated lead exposure sources. Since then, CDC cuts have left the program with one part-time employee and no ability to conduct screening.

The results are telling. In 2005, 1,641 city children were screened for lead. In 2014, 169 kids received a lead test.

Trump’s plan to eliminate the $375,000 in Home Partnership funds the city uses to develop lead-safe housing would have dire consequences, said James Crosby, deputy director of the city’s Bureau of Housing Services.

“It would mean we would be out of business,” Crosby said. “If he eliminates the home program, we would have absolutely nothing.”

A HUD spokesman declined to comment on the impact the cuts would have. “HUD will continue to work very closely with state and local health and housing officials through targeted investments in specific programs to reduce childhood lead poisoning,” he said.

CUTS AT THE EPA

A similar pattern is emerging at the EPA, where Administrator Scott Pruitt is highlighting some lead remediation efforts while pushing to gut funding to enforce pollution laws and clean up contaminated sites.

During the confirmation process, Pruitt told lawmakers he would work to reduce exposure to lead. On Wednesday he visited East Chicago, Indiana, where the EPA has secured $42 million from chemical companies to remove contaminated soil from neighborhoods near a former lead-smelting plant. In one neighborhood, up to 20 percent of tested children had elevated lead-blood levels.

Trump’s budget proposal would preserve funding for the EPA program that helps cities like Flint buy new water pipes.

But Pruitt would slash other federal efforts, including a one-third cut of EPA’s Superfund and Brownfield programs, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars less to clean up areas contaminated by lead mining in southeast Missouri, tainted yards and parks in Omaha and old school buildings on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota.

Pruitt would also eliminate a $27 million program that trains private contractors on safe lead removal from buildings, internal documents show.

An EPA spokesman said the agency is weighing strategies to save taxpayers money while protecting the environment. “We’re trying to restore some accountability to these and other programs so that we can examine what has worked – and most especially, what hasn’t,” wrote spokesman J.P. Freire.

Funding levels for the CDC, which spent $17 million last year through the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention program to help state and local governments, have been the subject of great uncertainty.

Earlier this year Trump lobbied for a Republican health-care bill that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act. In the process, the bill would have eliminated the pool of public-health money that funds the CDC’s lead program. In March, the bill collapsed in the House of Representatives.

Last week, a White House official told Reuters the administration intends to keep funds flowing to the CDC program. By Monday, however, the official had backed away from that commitment and said the program’s fate is uncertain until the administration produces a more detailed budget proposal in May.

The last round of cuts to the CDC’s lead budget in 2011 slashed assistance to many state poisoning prevention programs.

Those cuts were a reason why Flint’s problems didn’t come to light sooner, said Mary Jean Brown, a public health specialist at Harvard University who directed CDC’s lead program at the time. Without the CDC lead program, Michigan conducted less monitoring of childhood blood levels from 2011 to 2014, and stopped reporting test results to the CDC.

This created “a big gap in data,” Brown said, contributing to Flint’s crisis going unchecked or being ignored by Michigan officials until a pediatrician, scientists and activists presented proof children had been sickened.

(Editing by Ronnie Greene)

California judge questions Trump’s sanctuary city order

Avideh Moussavian, (R) a Policy Attorney for the National Immigration Law Center, speaks during a panel discussion promoting 'Justice and Equity in an Era of Indiscriminate Enforcement and Fear' at the National Conference on Sanctuary Cities in New York City, U.S., March 28, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

By Robin Respaut

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A California federal judge on Friday strongly questioned the U.S. Justice Department over whether to suspend an order by President Donald Trump to withhold federal funds from so-called sanctuary cities for immigrants.

U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick III questioned the purpose of the president’s order as he heard arguments from two large California counties and the Justice Department in San Francisco federal court. Both counties have asked for a nationwide preliminary injunction to the order.

As part of a larger plan to transform how the United States deals with immigration and national security, Trump in January signed an order targeting cities and counties that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Sanctuary cities in general offer safe harbor to illegal immigrants and often do not use municipal funds or resources to advance the enforcement of federal immigration laws. Sanctuary city is not an official designation.

Santa Clara County, which includes the city of San Jose and several smaller Silicon Valley communities, sued in February, saying Trump’s plan to withhold federal funds is unconstitutional. San Francisco filed a similar lawsuit.

On Friday, the counties described the order as a “weapon to cancel all funding to jurisdictions,” said John Keker, an attorney representing Santa Clara County. “All around the country, including here, people are having to deal with this right now.”

Santa Clara County receives roughly $1.7 billion in federal and federally dependent funds annually, about 35 percent of its total revenues. The county argued that every day it is owed millions of dollars of federal funding, and its budgetary planning process had been thrown into disarray by the order.

The Justice Department said the counties had taken an overly broad interpretation of the president’s order, which would impact only Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security funds, a fraction of the grant money received by the counties.

The government also argued that there had been no enforcement action to date, and it was unclear what actions against the counties would entail.

Judge Orrick asked the government what was the purpose of an executive order, if it only impacted a small amount of county funding.

Attorneys for the government said the order had highlighted issues that the Trump Administration deeply cared about and a national policy priority.

To win a nationwide injunction, local governments must demonstrate a high level of harm, the Justice Department noted in court filings last month.

(Reporting by Robin Respaut; additional reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Dan Grebler)

U.S.-UK alliance targets the world’s deadliest superbugs

MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) bacteria strain is seen in a petri dish containing agar jelly for bacterial culture in a microbiological laboratory in Berlin March 1, 2008. MRSA is a drug-resistant "superbug", which can cause deadly infections. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – Eleven biotech companies and research teams in Britain and the United States were awarded up to $48 million in funding on Thursday to speed development of new antibiotics powerful enough to take on the world’s deadliest superbugs.

The range of antimicrobial medicines able to kill the growing number of drug-resistant infections is dwindling and health experts warn that within a generation the death toll from such “superbug” infections could reach 10 billion.

Announcing its first funding, a new U.S.-U.K. alliance known as CARB-X, short for Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator, said it would invest an initial $24 million in 11 biotech companies pursing various projects to develop antibiotics and diagnostic. Another $24 million will be given in staged payments over three years as projects progress.

Added to private funds from the companies, the CARB-X funding could lead to an investment of more than $75 million in projects that show success, it said in a statement. Britain’s Wellcome Trust global health charity is committing 125 million pounds ($155.5 million) over five years.

Public health specialists have been warning for years that the world is facing an urgent global health threat from antibiotic-resistant superbug bacteria and that the pipeline of novel therapies to treat them is precariously thin.

Drug-resistant infections kill 700,000 people a year worldwide, and the last new antibiotic class to be approved for market was discovered in 1984.

With CARB-X funds, three of the 11 projects are working on potential new classes of antibiotics, while four are exploring new ways of targeting and killing bacteria.

Tim Jinks, head of drug resistant infection at the Wellcome Trust, said antibiotic resistance is already “a huge global health challenge” and is getting worse. “Without effective drugs, doctors cannot treat patients,” he said in a statement.

Kevin Outterson, CARB-X’s executive director and a professor of law at Boston University in the United States, added: “By accelerating promising research, it is our hope that we can speed up the delivery of new effective antibacterials, vaccines, devices and rapid diagnostics to patients who need them.”

(Editing by Alexander Smith)

U.S. judge blocks Texas plan to cut Planned Parenthood Medicaid funds

FILE PHOTO - Planned Parenthood South Austin Health Center is seen in Austin, Texas, U.S. on June 27, 2016. REUTERS/Ilana Panich-Linsman/File Photo

By Jon Herskovitz

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – A U.S. judge in Austin issued a preliminary injunction on Tuesday halting Texas’ plan to cut Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, saying the state did not present evidence of a program violation that would warrant termination.

U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks said state health officials “likely acted to disenroll qualified health care providers from Medicaid without cause.” He said the preliminary injunction will preserve the court’s ability to render a meaningful decision on the case’s merits.

“Such action would deprive Medicaid patients of their statutory right to obtain health care from their chosen qualified provider,” wrote the judge who was appointed by Republican former President George H.W. Bush.

The reproductive healthcare group has said the threatened funding cut, by terminating Planned Parenthood’s enrollment in the state-funded healthcare system for the poor, could affect nearly 11,000 patients across Texas as they try to access services such as HIV and cancer screenings.

Texas and several other Republican-controlled states have pushed to cut the organization’s funding since an anti-abortion group released videos it said showed Planned Parenthood officials negotiating prices for fetal tissue collected from abortions.

Texas investigated Planned Parenthood over the videos and a grand jury last January cleared it of any wrongdoing. The grand jury indicted two anti-abortion activists who made the videos for document fraud but the charges were dismissed.

The state took no further criminal action against Planned Parenthood after that but has repeated its accusations that the abortion provider may have violated state law.

Planned Parenthood has denied any wrongdoing and sued the anti-abortion activists who made the videos.

Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton said his office would appeal.

“Today’s decision is disappointing and flies in the face of basic human decency,” he said in a statement.

In fiscal 2015, Planned Parenthood affiliates across Texas received about $4.2 million in Medicaid funding, the state’s Health and Human Services Commission said. Planned Parenthood said the amount for 2016 was estimated at around $3 million.

None of the money that the group received went for abortions, plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Texas and the Medicaid defunding plan have said.

Planned Parenthood has 34 health centers in Texas, serving more than 120,000 patients, 11,000 of whom are Medicaid patients, it said.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Grant McCool and James Dalgleish)

Exclusive: Russia may borrow in yuan this year for first time

100 Yuan Note

By Yelena Orekhova and Andrey Ostroukh

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia may borrow Chinese yuan for the first time ever by the end of 2016, a Russian finance ministry official said, a step towards Moscow’s ambition of using Asian credit markets to compensate for its limited access to Western funding.

Russia needs new sources of cash as low crude oil prices lead to widening shortfalls in the budget. Its access to Western capital markets is restricted by Western sanctions imposed on it over the conflict in Ukraine.

One option the finance ministry may choose is selling treasury bonds, known as OFZs, denominated in the Chinese currency, later this year, Konstantin Vyshkovsky, head of the state debt department at the finance ministry, told Reuters.

Moscow may raise the equivalent of $1 billion in yuan through the OFZs, money that the finance ministry would convert into rubles, Vyshkovsky said.

Russia has drawn closer to China, painting it as its close partner, after Moscow’s relations with the West were soured by its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and its support of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine.

But Moscow’s pivot towards Asia has not gone smoothly, in part because Asian credit markets are much shallower than the Western debt markets that Russia has turned to in the past when it needed to borrow.

Russia raised $3 billion through a dollar-denominated Eurobond this year, but the issue was complicated by the fact that many major financial institutions were wary of taking part because of sanctions risk.

Under a plan set by the finance ministry, Russia will not raise any more foreign debt this year, so the yuan-denominated OFZs, which are considered domestic borrowing, would be a timely supplement for the budget.

The money raised may help avoid a greater budget deficit, which this year will exceed the ceiling of three percent of gross domestic product that had been initially set by President Vladimir Putin.

Russia’s Reserve Fund is running out and low prices for crude oil, its key export, are putting pressure on the budget. The finance ministry had said it will respond by increasing borrowing and will also try to proceed with selling state stakes in major Russia companies.

The OFZ bonds would be issued as part of additional borrowing worth 200 billion rubles ($3.21 billion), Vyshkovsky said.

The extra borrowing program for the fourth quarter was approved in September after Russia had nearly reached its full-year borrowing limit of 300 billion rubles in the domestic market in the first three quarters.

Sovereign rouble bonds enjoyed strong demand this year thanks to high yields linked to the central bank interest rates . The central bank has been reluctant to cut rates quickly, given risks that inflation won’t slow to its ambitious target an all-time low of 4 percent in 2017.

($1 = 62.2255 rubles)

(Reporting by Yelena Orekhova, writing by Andrey Ostroukh, editing by Christian Lowe, Larry King)

U.S. government shifts $81 million to Zika vaccine research

Zika prevention kit for pregnant women

By Julie Steenhuysen and Toni Clarke

CHICAGO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has shifted $81 million in funds from other projects to continue work on developing vaccines to fight Zika in the absence of any funding from U.S. lawmakers.

In a letter addressed to Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat and minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell said she was allocating $34 million in funding to the National Institutes of Health and $47 million to the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to work on Zika vaccines.

Burwell said the funding was intended to keep Zika vaccine research going despite the lack of funding from U.S. lawmakers, who left for summer recess before allocating any funding to Zika research and preparedness.

The mosquito-borne Zika virus has spread to more than 50 countries and territories since the outbreak began last year in Brazil. On Thursday, Governor Rick Scott said state health officials have identified three additional people in the affected area with locally transmitted Zika, bringing the total to 25.

The Obama administration in February requested $1.9 billion to fight Zika, but congressional lawmakers have been considering a much smaller sum. A bill providing $1.1 billion was blocked by Democrats after Republicans attached language to stop abortion-provider Planned Parenthood from using that government funding for healthcare services, mainly in U.S. territories like Puerto Rico.

The Republican legislation also would siphon off unused money under President Barack Obama’s signature 2010 healthcare law to combat Zika. In addition, Democrats balked at a Republican provision that they said would gut clean water protections.

The new bolus of funds from HHS comes on top of the $589 million in repurposed funds previously allocated for Ebola efforts. HHS has said these funds will run out at the end of August.

At a press briefing in Washington, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he needs $33 million to prepare to move the first potential Zika vaccine to the second phase of human clinical trials. The first phase of that testing is expected to end in late November or December.

Fauci said the health secretary has the authority to transfer 1 percent of NIH’s $33 billion budget per year from one Institute to the other. He said the director of the NIH, Dr. Francis Collins, will decide which existing programs the funds will be drawn from.

“He will probably do it on a prorated basis across the Institutes,” he said.

Fauci said the budget transfer will not fill the longer-term NIH funding needs to fight the virus and to develop a second or third potential vaccine candidate. Drugs frequently fail to realize the promise they show in early trials.

“We still need about $196 million more,” he said.

Fauci said the health secretary’s action was essentially one of desperation given the failure of Congress to authorize additional funding.

Taking money from other research programs “is extremely damaging to the biomedical research enterprise,” he said. “We’re taking money away from cancer, diabetes, all those things.”

Dr. LaMar Hasbrouck, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, said at the briefing that local health authorities are similarly siphoning off money from other programs.

“We’re robbing Peter to pay Paul,” he said.

In her letter, Burwell said the $47 million in funding for BARDA will allow the agency to enter into contracts with key partners to develop vaccines. But, she said BARDA will need an estimated $342 million in additional funding to continue its work with outside partners in the development of vaccines, diagnostics and pathogen inactivation technology used to protect the U.S. blood supply.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Toni Clarke in Washington; editing by Grant McCool and Bernard Orr)

First baby with Zika-related birth defect microcephaly born in Florida

Hillsborough County mosquito control drives through a neighborhood spraying against mosquitos

By Colleen Jenkins

(Reuters) – A Haitian woman in Florida has delivered the first baby in the state born with the birth defect microcephaly caused by the Zika virus, Florida’s health department said on Tuesday.

The mother contracted the mosquito-borne virus in her home country and traveled to Florida to give birth, state officials said in statements.

If confirmed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the child will be the fifth in the United States to be born with a birth defect linked with travel to a country in which Zika is circulating.

Another four pregnant women lost their babies as a result of travel-related Zika infections, according to the latest CDC report as of June 16. So far, there have not been any cases of Zika in the United States arising from local mosquito transmission.

The CDC’s U.S. Zika Pregnancy Registry does not specify the states where those cases occurred. Cases of babies with microcephaly previously were reported in Hawaii and New Jersey.

U.S. health officials have concluded that Zika infections in pregnant women can cause microcephaly, a birth defect marked by unusually small head size and potentially severe developmental problems.

The U.S. cases so far involve women who contracted the virus outside the United States in areas with active Zika outbreaks, or were infected through unprotected sex with an infected partner.

Health experts expect local transmission to occur in the United States as mosquito season gets underway, particularly in states such as Florida and Texas.

Florida Governor Rick Scott signed an executive order last week that allocated about $26 million for Zika preparation and response in the state. But in Washington on Tuesday, funding to battle the virus failed to advance in the U.S. Senate.

The connection between Zika and microcephaly first came to light last fall in Brazil, which has now confirmed more than 1,400 cases of microcephaly that it considers to be related to Zika infections in the mothers.

The World Health Organization has said there is strong scientific consensus that Zika also can cause Guillain-Barre, a rare neurological syndrome that causes temporary paralysis in adults.

(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Julie Steenhuysen and Bernard Orr)

Republican lawmakers approve $1.1 billion in new Zika funds

Woman looks at CDC sign

By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday agreed to $1.1 billion to fight the Zika virus, short-changing President Barack Obama’s $1.9 billion funding request and angering Democrats by making other cuts to pay for it.

The House approved a funding deal that had been agreed to on Wednesday by Republicans from both the House and Senate. But the bill’s future was uncertain in the Senate, where the Democratic minority has more power to stop legislation, and Democratic leader Harry Reid has declared his opposition.

“It is a responsible plan that assures the administration will continue to have the needed resources to protect the public,” Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said. Republicans said the deal included funding for fiscal years 2016 and 2017.

But the White House said the allocation fell short.

“This plan from congressional Republicans is four months late and nearly a billion dollars short of what our public health experts have said is necessary to do everything possible to fight the Zika virus, and steals funding from other health priorities,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement before the House voted.

Earnest said the Republican plan would limit needed birth control services for women seeking to prevent Zika, which can be spread through unprotected sex — “a clear indication they don’t take seriously the threat from the Zika virus.”

Democrats have been urging Republicans for months to agree to more Zika funding, and the Obama administration has already reprogrammed nearly $600 million that had been set aside to fight Ebola.

House Democrats said they could not go along with the deal because of $750 million in budget cuts elsewhere that the Republicans want to use to pay for the Zika spending.

Senate Democrats also voiced displeasure, clouding the outlook for it passing.

“A narrowly partisan proposal that cuts off women’s access to birth control, shortchanges veterans and rescinds Obamacare funds to cover the cost is not a serious response to the threat from the Zika virus,” Reid said.

Still, Ryan urged the Senate to move on the bill.

According to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, $543 million of the $1.1 billion would come from unspent funds set aside for implementing Obamacare in U.S. territories, while $107 million would come from unused funds to fight another virus, Ebola. Another $100 million would come from unused administrative funds at the Department of Health and Human Services, he said.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell and Susan Heavey; Editing by Toby Chopra)

drcolbert.monthly

U.S. plans billions in Afghan funding until 2020

Graffiti is seen on a wall of the Darul Aman palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, June 5, 2016.

By Josh Smith

KABUL (Reuters) – The United States is asking its allies helping with security in Afghanistan to maintain funding for Afghan forces at a cost of nearly $5 billion a year until at least 2020, a top U.S. military commander said on Monday.

The plan extends the international financial commitment for the foreseeable future at a time when Western leaders have been hoping to reduce Afghanistan’s reliance on foreign military aid.

Military commanders are making the pitch for continued funding ahead of a NATO summit in Warsaw in early July, where the alliance’s leaders will discuss support for the Afghan government, which is struggling to contain a resurgent Taliban insurgency.

“There is strong agreement, certainly from the chiefs of defense, that the support for Afghanistan … needs to continue,” Major General Skip Davis told reporters in Kabul.

“I think there is much more consensus on the fact that stemming extremism here, in the region, is a direct contribution to security in the homeland. There’s a willingness to do what it takes.”

Efforts by Western nations to extract themselves from the war in Afghanistan have been frustrated by high levels of violence.

When they gathered at a similar summit in 2012, NATO members and other nations had planned on slowly reducing financial support for Afghanistan as international troops withdrew.

“Obviously, conditions have changed since decisions were made back in 2012 and 2014,” Davis said.

Under the current funding structure, the United States provides a little more than $3.5 billion a year.

Other countries contribute another $900 million to $1 billion, while the Afghan government pays more than $400 million, a share Davis said was expected to grow.

Commanders say that general level of funding is expected to continue for at least four years.

The funding is based on maintaining a goal of 352,000 Afghan soldiers and police. The official roster currently includes about 320,000 members of the security forces, Davis said.

Among the factors that coalition commanders are considering as they recommend funding and troop levels are the high rates of Afghan casualties, their struggles in training new troops and replacing damaged equipment, and the continuing “fragility” of the national government, Davis said.

“Last year was a big signal that the Afghan army and police need some more time,” he said.

“They are resilient, they fought well and they took on leadership, but at the same time, they had some significant challenges and the Taliban proved much more resilient than we expected and less likely to come to the table for reconciliation.”

(Reporting by Josh Smith; Editing by Robert Birsel)

U.S. states on Zika’s frontline see big gaps in funding

A Greater Los Angeles County Vector Control District worker pours away stagnant water as she searches for mosquitoes in a backyard

By Julie Steenhuysen

(Reuters) – In Mississippi, a small team of entomologists has begun the first survey of mosquito populations in decades. Experts do not believe the kind of mosquitoes most likely to carry the Zika virus are active in the state, but they cannot know for sure.

By contrast, the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, has been active since the late 1920s. With an annual budget of over $15 million, it now deploys four helicopters, two airplanes and 33 inspectors covering 125 square miles.

Because they are funded by local taxpayer dollars, U.S. mosquito control programs reflect deep economic disparities between communities, leaving some at-risk locations badly unprepared for the virus that is spreading through the Americas.

First detected in Brazil last year, Zika has been linked in that country to more than 1,300 cases of microcephaly, a rare birth defect defined by unusually small heads.

The outbreak is expected to reach the continental United States in the coming weeks as temperatures rise and mosquito populations multiply. In interviews with Reuters, more than a dozen state and local health officials and disease control experts say they worry they will have neither the money nor the time to plug gaping holes in the nation’s defenses.

They say the poorest communities along the Gulf of Mexico with a history of dengue outbreaks are at the highest risk.

States in the south are “woefully under-invested,” said Dr. Thomas Dobbs, epidemiologist for the Mississippi State Department of Health. “You have these gaping holes in capacity,” he said, with many poor communities mobilizing their first mosquito control efforts in years.

Among the best-prepared is Harris County, Texas, which includes the city of Houston. It dedicates $4.5 million a year to controlling disease carriers, or vectors, such as mosquitoes, ticks or rodents.

The 50-year-old program is considered one of the best in the country. Traps have been set up in 268 areas in the county to capture and catalog mosquitoes and test them for pesticide resistance. It is adding new traps for the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that carry Zika.

New York City plans to spend $21 million over three years to combat the virus. Aedes aegypti have never been found in the city, so its efforts will target Aedes albopictus, a mosquito believed to be capable of spreading the virus.

At the other end of the spectrum, some communities may only have a “Chuck in the truck” – someone who does spraying runs with a fogger attached to his pickup, said Stan Cope, president of the American Mosquito Control Association. Many municipalities do not even have that much.

The Obama administration has asked Congress for nearly $1.9 billion to fight Zika, including $453 million to assist with emergency response, laboratory capacity and mosquito control. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives and Senate have presented their own funding proposals, which each fall far short of that sum.

STOPGAP FUNDING

To help plug some of the gaps until Congress acts, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is adding $38 million to an existing infectious diseases grant program to expand lab testing capacity and surveillance for Zika.

For the first time, CDC will also provide an additional $15 million to help local programs most in need, CDC entomologist Janet McAllister told Reuters.

She said states’ proposals are due by the end of May and could cover funding for trucks, equipment and chemicals, as well as hiring contractors.

The CDC has also earmarked $25 million for at-risk states and territories, though the funds would primarily go health departments to help them deal with Zika cases.

But the CDC money is not expected to reach states until August at the earliest, late in the game to do mosquito surveillance.

The agency estimates that Aedes aegypti could be present in as many as 27 U.S. states, though the chief worry will be areas with recent dengue fever cases, McAllister said. Those include South Florida, South Texas, Southern California, areas along the U.S. border with Mexico, Louisiana and Hawaii. (Graphic: http://tmsnrt.rs/1QvaMW6)

Frank Welch, medical director for the office of community preparedness for Louisiana, a state with 64 different types of mosquitoes, said his concern was that federal emergency funding might get delayed until the fall.

“That would certainly be too late for immediate Zika preparedness,” he said.

DIFFERENT ANIMAL

Even communities with established, well-funded insect-fighting programs may lack the tools to prevent an outbreak.

“We don’t feel horribly confident that anybody in the world is very good at controlling these mosquitoes,” said Susanne Kluh, Scientific-Technical Services Director for the Greater Los Angeles County Vector Control District.

One reason is that most U.S. programs are designed to deal with nuisance mosquitoes or those carrying West Nile, which are controlled by spraying at night and dropping tablets that kill mosquito larvae into catch basins.

Confronting Aedes aegypti, a daytime biter that lives in and around homes and breeds in tiny containers of water, is more expensive and inherently less efficient.

“It’s a different animal. It requires a very different method to control,” said Michael Doyle, a former CDC entomologist who directs mosquito control in the Florida Keys.

In 2009, Doyle oversaw efforts to fight dengue, also carried by Aedes aegypti. Inspectors went door to door every week, dumping containers of water in back yards that could serve as breeding sites, spraying pesticides to kill adult mosquitoes and using a liquid non-toxic bacterial formulation to kill larvae. After every rainstorm, they continue to spray 80,000 acres with the larvicide.

That has proved expensive at $16 per acre (0.4 hectare) plus helicopter costs. The efforts have only reduced the Aedes aegypti mosquito population by half since 2010, which Doyle said is not enough to prevent disease transmission.

In California, Aedes aegypti mosquitoes arrived as recently as 2013 and have spread to seven counties from south of Fresno to San Diego. “It has really changed the manpower needs,” Kluh said.

Kluh said her district traditionally treats easily accessible public areas, such as catch basins, storm drains and the occasional swimming pool.

“This battle against these mosquitoes happens in every backyard and in tiny sources as small as a bottle cap filled with sprinkler water.”

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Tomasz Janowski)