You are here

Home

Ebola Vaccine Would Likely Have Been Found By Now If Not For Budget Cuts: NIH Director

Primary tabs

Mon, 2014-10-13 15:29 — mike kraft

HUFFINGTON POST

By Sam Stein                                                              Updated Oct. 13 ,2014

BETHESDA, Md. -- As the federal government frantically works to combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and as it responds to a second diagnosis of the disease at home, one of the country's top health officials says a vaccine likely would have already been discovered were it not for budget cuts.

Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, said that a decade of stagnant spending has "slowed down" research on all items, including vaccinations for infectious diseases. As a result, he said, the international community has been left playing catch-up on a potentially avoidable humanitarian catastrophe.

"NIH has been working on Ebola vaccines since 2001. It's not like we suddenly woke up and thought, 'Oh my gosh, we should have something ready here,'" Collins told The Huffington Post on Friday. "Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would've gone through clinical trials and would have been ready."

It's not just the production of a vaccine that has been hampered by money shortfalls. Collins also said that some therapeutics to fight Ebola "were on a slower track than would've been ideal, or that would have happened if we had been on a stable research support trajectory."

Read full story

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/12/ebola-vaccine_n_5974148.html

Country / Region Tags: 
Global
Africa
United States
General Topic Tags: 
Contagion
Disaster Response
Disease
Economics
Government
Health
Pandemics
Research
Science
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 
Problem
Situation Report
Groups this Group Post belongs to: 
Africa Resilience Initiative
Global Health
Guinea Resilience System
- Private group -

Comments

Mon, 2014-10-13 19:11 — mike kraft

 Members of the appropriations committees in the House and Senate plan to put increased funding in a bill that would keep the government operating after current legislation expires on Dec. 11, according to a Senate Democratic aide, who requested anonymity to discuss the plans that haven’t been announced. The aide said no decisions had been made on details.

The Ebola risk in the U.S. may open a debate over government spending on research and preparedness.

Democratic Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania said Congress must make sure there is enough money to help the nation’s roughly 5,000 hospitals adequately prepare for Ebola.

See full story with additional budget details.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-13/ebola-case-in-u-s-sparks-talks-on-more-respnose-funding.html

howdy folks