He said the director of the NIH, Dr. Francis Collins will decide which existing programs the funds will be drawn from. "We're robbing Peter to pay Paul," he said.In her letter, Burwell said the $47 million in funding for BARDA will allow the agency to enter into contracts with key partners to develop vaccines. "We still need about $196 million more," he said.Fauci said the health secretary's action was essentially one of desperation given the failure of Congress to authorize additional funding.Taking money from other research programs "is extremely damaging to the biomedical research enterprise," he said. In addition, Democrats balked at a Republican provision that they said would gut clean water protections.The new bolus of funds from HHS comes on top of the $589 million in repurposed funds previously allocated for Ebola efforts. But, she said BARDA will need an estimated $342 million in additional funding to continue its work with outside partners in the development of vaccines, diagnostics and pathogen inactivation technology used to protect the US blood supply.

Source: Times of India August 12, 2016 05:34 UTC