Senior public health officials said Congress’s months-late $800m-short Zika funding bill will seriously damage research budgets for heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Officials with the federal Health and Human Services Administration called on Congress to consider an emergency health fund for future emerging diseases, similar to the way natural disasters are funded. Funds from, “cancer, heart disease, diabetes and mental health allowed us to prepare sites to do the phase two trial,” said Fauci. “We won’t be able to backfill for the cancer research we had to take from to keep things going,” said the health and human services secretary, Sylvia Burwell. He said that, “at least from our standpoint, [an emergency fund] is something that should be seriously considered.”

Source: The Guardian October 03, 2016 19:58 UTC