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-- OriginalOwner_ [tinyurl.com] writes:

from the government-for-all-the-people dept.

Workers World reports [workers.org]

Transmission of Zika is escalating in Florida. As of Aug. 24, the number of locally contracted Zika cases jumped to 43 in Miami, Miami Beach, and Tampa. Some 11,351 cases of Zika are now confirmed in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

President Barack Obama requested $1.9 billion to control Zika in February. But Congress, now on summer recess, has still not allocated any federal funds or developed a centralized plan to stop the outbreak. Funding should have been apportioned last spring when it was clear that the virus was heading toward the Gulf states.

[...]Health care officials estimate $2 billion is needed to control and track Zika-carrying mosquitoes and disease outbreaks, develop a vaccine, and monitor pregnant women and babies.

Now, Zika funding comes from some local governments and federal money diverted mostly from Ebola allocations. On Aug. 11, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it apportioned $81 million to develop a Zika vaccine. But this money is being diverted from research projects for other diseases.

[...]Squabbling over Zika funding in Congress is absurd. The money is there. Funds could be taken from the bloated Pentagon budget of more than $600 billion a year for weapons and war. Or from the $1 trillion allocated for a 30-year "nuclear modernization" program.

[...]How Cuba prevents a Zika outbreak

In Cuba, two new cases of locally acquired Zika were announced on Aug. 1. But the government has prevented a viral outbreak after one case of locally acquired Zika was reported last March, and it has kept travel-related cases down to 30.

Cuba began fighting Zika before it arrived. The country's socialist health care and community surveillance program was created in 1981 when dengue fever broke out in the region. Cuba eradicated Aedes aegypti, [the Zika-carrying mosquito,] then.

When another outbreak threatens, "it's no problem for us to reinforce our system", says Ileana Morales, director of science and technology at Cuba's public health ministry.

[...]In February, Cuban airports began screening people arriving from Zika-infected countries. Medical workers regularly go door-to-door to see if anyone has symptoms.

The country's health workers are now intensifying preventive efforts near the two recent victims' homes. They spray pesticides, eliminate standing water, and search for infected people and mosquitoes.

Cuba's socialized medical system provides frequent prenatal exams. [...] These provide an automatic detection system for microcephaly and other Zika-related birth defects.

The island's researchers are working on a Zika vaccine.

[...]Workers World [...] wrote on May 26, "As Congress's reaction to the threatened Zika epidemic shows, the capitalist health care model kills." With a socialist system that puts people's needs first, "Cuba provides a stellar example of how the Zika crisis can be handled with a slew of preventive public health measures."

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