NEW HAVEN - U.S. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-3, released the following statement today on the unconfirmed Ebola case at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
DeLauro has been in contact with officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today, and attended a press briefing on the situation.
“My thoughts and prayers are with the individual and family impacted by this unconfirmed Ebola case. Later this afternoon we should receive preliminary test results from the Laboratory Response Network, which is supported by the CDC. I am encouraged by the cooperation among health, state and local officials; first and emergency responders; and Yale-New Haven Hospital staff. But we must continue to take every precaution to protect our medical workers and stop this from spreading. Since the outbreak began I have been in constant communication with officials at the NIH and CDC.
“As the senior Democrat on the subcommittee responsible for funding the NIH and CDC, I have fought for more resources for those agencies. We are seeing now how crucial they are, as they are in the lead on responding to the Ebola crisis. Unfortunately, federal support for these programs has dwindled due to budget cuts over the last four years. The NIH’s purchasing power has been cut by 10 percent over the last four years. The CDC program that supports the lab doing the testing has been cut by 11 percent over the last four year. The Health and Human Services program that supports local preparedness has been cut by 44 percent.
"As NIH Director Francis Collins has said, we would be much further along on an Ebola vaccine if it were not for these cuts. National preparedness efforts have been damaged as well. We need to reverse this trend.”
DeLauro is the senior Democrat on the subcommittee responsible for funding the CDC and National Institutes of Health.
She has called for that subcommittee to hold a hearing on budget cuts to those agencies in light of the ongoing Ebola outbreak and has yet to receive a response.
More information on the cuts can be found here.
This post is taken from a release from DeLauro's office Thursday afternoon.
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