Robust Emergency Fund Needed to Respond to Future Disease Outbreaks

Scientific American ------- Public health emergencies are a fact of life in a world as interconnected as ours. In just the past five years we have witnessed unexpected outbreaks of devastating diseases—Ebola, chikungunya, yellow fever and Zika—each of which has spread far beyond its historical geographical range. No one can say what the next large-scale emergency will be, whom it will affect or when it will strike, but we do know that it is inevitable. Yet the U.S. is woefully unprepared to meet this threat because it does not set aside money to beat back an outbreak before it can spread. The U.S. used to have a robust national public health emergency fund, first created by Congress in the 1980s, but its balance has since dwindled to a paltry $57,000—enough to buy a few thousand first aid kits but not much else. What we need is more on the order of several hundred million to $1 billion in new funding that is always and immediately available and is replenished whenever it becomes depleted. To get more in depth information click on the picture below to read the article.