Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, there is an urgent need that we must address--I hope it will be later in the day--which is emergency funding to facilitate a rapid response to a spreading public health crisis--now in Puerto Rico but threatening the rest of our Nation. There must be a rapid, robust response to the public health emergency the Zika virus poses.

Zika is a vicious, virulent virus capable of crippling and killing. We have seen its effects in some cases of developmental disability that has resulted to children. It poses a threat to 4 million people in the Americas.

Connecticut may not be generally thought to have a warm climate, but the mosquitoes are swarming and spawning there. They include a type of mosquito--the Asian tiger--that has now been documented to carry Zika. This poses an immediate and urgent threat for Connecticut and for the entire eastern coast and Northeast United States.

There is a way that Connecticut is contributing to a solution. Two of our companies in Connecticut, Quest and Protein Sciences, are actively working on a vaccine. I visited Protein Sciences recently and saw firsthand the work that is being done there, but the scientists at that company and others working on a vaccine need this emergency funding. That is their plea to us, and I hope we will respond to it today--not just because the vaccine is needed, but it must be part of a broader effort, to include eliminating and eradicating mosquitoes wherever possible, educating the public on how to protect themselves and particularly their children and pregnant women against this disease.

In Connecticut, there have already been six Zika diagnoses to date. There have been none resulting from infections in Connecticut but still affecting pregnant women. Our experience documents that any State in our country may be eventually affected.

My plea today is that we use this opportunity to pass emergency funding and not deplete or gut a critical resource--the Prevention and Public Health Fund. For example, this fund has provided $324 million for section 317 immunization grant programs, which States rely on to maintain and increase vaccine coverage, particularly for uninsured Americans and for needed responses to disease outbreaks. Invading and decimating this fund will do lasting damage to the public health of America because the Prevention and Public Health Fund is the Federal Government's largest single investment in prevention.

Over the past 5 years, the fund has put more than $6 billion toward overdue investments in disease prevention and public health promotion. Raiding this fund would wreak havoc on our efforts to reduce chronic disease rates, immunize our children, address infectious disease outbreaks and, ironically, lower health care costs.

There is a saying I have heard numerous times on the floor of the Senate and at other public forums: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That lesson has been brought home by our experience with Ebola as well as with other public health threats. It is equally true of Zika. We should endeavor to eradicate mosquitoes and educate the public on the spread of this disease before it causes microcephaly, other developmental disabilities, and loss of vision and hearing in newborns. It is a threat to adults, as well as to newborns. Undercutting the investments we have made to date in public health is far from the right course to take. With women and families across the country looking to Congress for action, now is the time for us to take advantage of the bipartisan measures that are before us.

I urge that we support those bipartisan measures that will help us increase readiness and surveillance, develop a vaccine, and educate communities about how we can better protect women and children, as well as others, from this vicious and pernicious disease.

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