Editorial: House must approve Zika funding bill quickly

By The Herald Editorial Board

Since Congress recessed in mid-July without approving funds to fight the Zika virus, the mosquito-borne virus hasn’t taken a break.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

At least 14 local mosquito-borne cases of the virus have appeared, most in a Miami, Florida, neighborhood.

The number of travel-associated cases in the U.S. has grown to 2,245.

In U.S. territories, mostly in Puerto Rico, 8,000 cases of locally acquired cases have been reported.

The Snohomish Health District has reported the fourth case of travel-related Zika, while King County has reported seven such cases.

And more than 500 pregnant women in the U.S. have shown laboratory evidence of possible Zika infection as have nearly 700 pregnant women in U.S. territories. And 16 infants in the U.S. have been born with birth defects to mothers infected with Zika. Five infants have died in pregnancy.

Most prevalent in South and Central America the mosquito-borne virus is not typically fatal and in most cases results in only mild symptoms. But its threat is much greater for pregnant women and the children they carry. The virus can cause birth defects when pregnant women are infected by mosquitoes or through sexual contact with an infected person. The most common birth defect is microcephaly, which results in infants with abnormally small heads and reduced brain development. But the CDC has recorded seven Zika-caused cases in the U.S. of Guillain-Barré syndrome, in which the immune system attacks the nervous system, causing paralysis.

Zika now has a substantial head start.

President Obama requested $1.9 billion in February to fund vaccine research, mosquito-control efforts and other work to combat the virus. When funding wasn’t quickly approved by Congress, Obama redirected $589 million in existing funds to begin some of that work. He diverted another $81 million from biomedical research and antipoverty programs to fund Zika vaccine research this month.

In mid-May, the Senate, in a bipartisan deal negotiated by U.S. Sens. Patty Murray, D-Washington, and Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, passed legislation that would have funded $1.1 billion of the president’s request.

Instead of voting on the Senate bill, House Republicans offered a funding measure that was blocked by Democrats because it would have stripped money for Planned Parenthood and other women’s clinics to provide contraception, escalating the fight beyond Republicans’ original objections to abortion funding.

With a disease that in the U.S. has significant potential to be spread by sexual transmission, greater — not less — availability to condoms and other birth control measures is necessary. Allowing long-standing attempts to defund Planned Parenthood to block effective control and research of a health threat only advances the danger that Zika poses to infants in pregnancy.

Congress makes a brief return to work after Labor Day, giving it just more than a month before it goes back into recess in early October before the Nov. 8 election. The House can provide researchers and health officials the funding necessary to cut into Zika’s head start by passing the Senate’s legislation.