The House of Representatives late last night approved an emergency spending package to provide $622.1 million to prevent the spread of the Zika virus both in the U.S. and abroad.

    “Currently no therapeutics exist to treat Zika virus nor is there a vaccine – but that gap need not be forever,” said Rep. Chris Smith, Chairman of the House congressional panel that oversees global health issues.  “Lessons learned from years of malaria mosquito control have applicability to Zika and can prove helpful if resources and expertise are made available.”

    The New Jersey Republican who has held hearings on the Zika virus and other vector borne diseases (viruses and bacteria transmitted by such carriers as mosquitoes, ticks, fleas) supported today’s funding package and noted that it will enhance vaccine research and increase support for domestic mosquito control, prenatal care, delivery and postpartum care, newborn health assessments and care for infants with special needs. He said the package also provides funding for international mosquito control and other efforts to prevent, prepare for and respond to the Zika virus.

    “In addition to boosting vaccine research for worldwide outbreaks, we must step up our domestic efforts to control mosquitoes before warmer weather leads to an explosion of the mosquito population in the homeland,” Smith said.

    “By funding mosquito control efforts we take an important step to protect people from the threat of Zika including unborn and newborn babies for whom the impact is most severe,” he said.

    In the last few years, the United States has had to deal with new diseases such as Ebola and West Nile Virus and the resurgence in this country of diseases like chikungunya and dengue fever.  Smith is the author of a separate bill, the End Neglected Tropical Diseases Act (HR 1797) which will enhance current research–not just on one disease but tropical diseases generally. 

    With the Zika virus now joining the ranks of previously little-known diseases that have created global alarm, the time has come for a more consistent policy before the next explosive health crisis appears. HR 1797, which has been reported from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, will create Centers of Excellence to study every aspect of these dreaded diseases before the an outbreak becomes the next epidemic.

    Among the hearings Smith has chaired is the Feb. 10, 2016 session entitled “The Global Zika Epidemic,” featuring top American health officials on the topic of Zika, including Dr. Tom Frieden, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and; Dr. Ariel Pablos-Mendez, M.D., Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Global Health at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).