WHO says $56 million needed to fight Zika

February 17, 2016  15:23

The World Health Organization says it will take $56 million to kickstart a coordinated international response to the Zika virus outbreak racing through much of the Americas, and the WHO plans to tap a newly created emergency contingency fund to pay for the initial efforts.

In a lengthy action plan published Tuesday,  the organization said a hefty chunk of the money will go toward disease surveillance, which will include tracking new Zika cases and the suspected birth defects and rare autoimmune syndrome that scientists suspect are linked to the mosquito-borne virus. More funding will be used to help provide counseling to pregnant women, as well as to help communities with mosquito-control programs. Still more funds will go toward research to speed the development of new vaccines, treatments and diagnostic tests, as well as to study whether and how Zika is causing serious conditions such as microcephaly.

More than half the money will be spread among a collection of international partners, including non-governmental organizations and research institutions such as Unicef, AmeriCares, Save the Children, the International Medical Corps and the University of Texas Medical Branch. The remaining funds will be disbursed within the WHO and its regional offices in the Americas -- known as the Pan American Health Organization -- to help carry out the plan through June. Last month, the organization declared the Zika outbreak and the accompanying spike in congenital brain abnormalities in newborns to be a public health emergency of international concern.

The resources detailed by the WHO are much less than those sought by the Obama administration, which earlier this month asked Congress for $1.8 billion to respond to the Zika virus abroad and prepare for it at home.

About $828 million of the administration's request would go to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which already has put its emergency operations center in Atlanta on the highest level of alert to monitor the disease. The White House also proposed $250 million for a one-year increase in Medicaid funds for Puerto Rico, which has seen a growing number of Zika infections. The administration would pump $200 million into accelerated vaccine and testing techniques for Zika through the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, and $210 million would go to a new fund to respond to new outbreaks if they appear in the United States.

The rest of the administration's funding request would help other countries respond to the virus. It would include $335 million for the U.S. Agency for International Development and $41 million for the State Department to respond across South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

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