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Did Federal Budget Cuts Make Ebola Worse?

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, the CDC confirmed the first case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States—the infected patient was a man who traveled from Liberia to visit family in Texas. It’s the latest development in the ever-worsening outbreak of the virus, which so far has sickened more than 6,500 people and killed more than 3,000. The United States government has pledged to send help to West Africa to help stop Ebola from spreading—but the main agencies tasked with this aid work say they’re hamstrung by budget cuts from the 2013 sequester.

On September 16, the Senate Committees on Appropriations and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing to discuss the resources needed to address the outbreak. Rep. Patty Murray (D-WA) asked NIH representative Anthony Fauci about the sequester’s effect on the efforts.

“I have to tell you honestly it’s been a significant impact on us,” said Fauci. “It has both in an acute and a chronic, insidious way eroded our ability to respond in the way that I and my colleagues would like to see us be able to respond to these emerging threats. And in my institute particularly, that’s responsible for responding on the dime to an emerging infectious disease threat, this is particularly damaging.” The sequester required the NIH to cut its budget by 5 percent, a total of $1.55 billion in 2013. Cuts were applied across all of its programs, affecting every area of medical research.

Dr. Beth Bell, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, testified before the Committee, making a case for increased funding. Her department, which has led the US intervention in West Africa, was hit with a $13 million budget cut as a result of the cuts in 2013. Though appropriations increased in 2014 and are projected to rise further in 2015, the agency hasn’t yet made up for the deficit—according to Bell, $100 million has already gone toward stopping the Ebola epidemic, and much more is needed. The UN estimates it will take over $600 million just to get the crisis under control.

More MoJo coverage of the Ebola crisis.


Liberians Explain Why the Ebola Crisis Is Way Worse Than You Think


These Maps Show How Ebola Spread In Liberia


Why the World Health Organization Doesn’t Have Enough Funds to Fight Ebola


New Drugs and Vaccines Can’t Stop This Ebola Outbreak


We Are Making Ebola Outbreaks Worse by Cutting Down Forests

Bell also argued that the epidemic could have been stopped if more had been done sooner to build global health security. International aid budgets were hit hard by the sequester, reducing global health programs by $411 million and USAID by $289 million. “If even modest investments had been made to build a public health infrastructure in West Africa previously, the current Ebola epidemic could have been detected earlier, and it could have been identified and contained,” she said during her testimony. “This Ebola epidemic shows that any vulnerability could have widespread impact if not stopped at the source.”

Still, CDC officials have pledged to do everything in their power to stop Ebola in its tracks. “The sooner the world comes together to help West Africa, the safer we all will be,” CDC Director Tom Frieden says in a statement released in early September. “We know how to stop this outbreak. There is a window of opportunity to tamp this down—the challenge is to scale up the massive response needed.”

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Did Federal Budget Cuts Make Ebola Worse?

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Quick Reads: "The Bosnia List" by Kenan Trebincevic and Susan Shapiro

Mother Jones

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The Bosnia List

By Kenan Trebincevic and Susan Shapiro

PENGUIN BOOKS

An estimated 100,000 people died during the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the early 1990s, but few Americans grasp the insanity of the conflict. Kenan Trebincevic, a Bosnian Muslim, was 11 when the fighting broke out. He describes how lifelong friends turned on his family, how his brother and father were thrown into detainment camps, and how they eventually fled under nightmarish conditions. He also takes us on a trip home to complete his titular to-do list as he confronts the betrayers and attempts to make sense of the nonsensical.

This review originally appeared in our January/February 2014 issue of Mother Jones.

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Quick Reads: "The Bosnia List" by Kenan Trebincevic and Susan Shapiro

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