What To Expect When You’re Expecting Zika
I called my congress folks and asked them to get this funded. Short video at link.
What To Expect When You’re Expecting Zika
Pregnancy author Heidi Murkoff scolded Congress for failing to confront a virus devastating to moms and babies.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/what-to-expect-when-youre-expecting-zika_us_5745d462e4b0dacf7ad399fd?utm_hp_ref=politics
05/25/2016 02:47 pm ET
Michael McAuliff
Senior Congressional Reporter, The Huffington Post
WASHINGTON — Democrats played the baby card Wednesday in their push to get Congress to pass robust funding to combat the impending Zika crisis, bringing mothers, babies and noted pregnancy author Heidi Murkoff to Capitol Hill to make the pitch.
With toddlers scrambling around the Lyndon Baines Johnson room just off the Senate floor, Murkoff, the author of What To Expect When You’re Expecting, chided the legislative body for inaction in the face of an obvious threat.
“I just have to wonder why Congress is not acting promptly and fully to live up to that universal, sacred responsibility of protecting moms and babies, of putting moms and babies before politics,” Mukoff said.
The Obama administration asked Congress for $1.9 billion in February to combat the mosquito-spread disease, which is linked to microcephaly in developing infants, as well as to other frightening ailments.
So far, the Senate has passed just $1.1 billion as part of a much larger spending bill for which there is no equivalent measure in the House of Representatives yet. The House has passed only $622 million in a standalone measure that is paid for by taking funds from the effort to combat Ebola.
Neither House nor Senate leaders have offered any way of resolving the differences as the Memorial Day vacation looms, despite pleas from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other experts, noted Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.).
“We know it’s coming to our country, and as the weather is getting warming, our nation’s top medical experts say we must pass funding, on an emergency basis,” Coons said.
“I find it extremely difficult to understand how we could just ignore the advice of the CDC and our best medical experts,” Coons added. “Unfortunately though, that’s what we’re dealing with here in the Senate as we go into Memorial Day, which is the official start of summer and the mosquito season.”
Chris Zahn, a doctor who is a vice president at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, warned that it was foolish to delay dealing with the Zika threat when it could cost some $10 million to treat each afflicted infant, according to CDC estimates..............................
