[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 20596-20597]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, 2018 marks the 100-year anniversary of the 
influenza pandemic that killed an estimated 50 million people, 
including 670,000 Americans. I suspect most people assume that, given 
the remarkable advances in modern medicine since 1918, nothing so 
disastrous could happen again, but in fact, it could, and next time, it 
could be even worse. The spread of infectious diseases and drug 
resistance, and the accompanying threats to global security, are on the 
rise, and the international community is woefully underprepared to 
fight back.
  The several large-scale infectious disease outbreaks of the last two 
decades, including SARS, H1N1, and Ebola, have revealed the extent to 
which individual countries and the international community at large 
need to dramatically improve their preparedness to respond to such 
potentially catastrophic health crises.
  The stark reality is that the threat is increasing. An ever-growing, 
increasingly mobile global population will provide the breeding ground 
for the emergence and contagion of existing and new infectious 
diseases.
  The potential threats from infectious disease outbreaks include not 
only catastrophic loss of life, but severe economic harm and social and 
political instability. The 2014-15 Ebola outbreak, for example, which 
began with the death of a 2-year-old boy in a remote Guinean village, 
ultimately killed more than 11,000 people across six countries, left 
thousands of children orphaned, caused an estimated economic loss to 
those countries of nearly $3 billion, and resulted in many people 
losing confidence in their country's public health system.
  It is important to note that Ebola, which is spread through direct 
contact and terrified millions of people including in this country, is 
hardly the most infectious known disease. Several other disease agents, 
such as measles and influenza, can be spread through the air and can 
develop into epidemics or pandemics much more rapidly.
  That is one of the reasons why many global health experts fear that 
an infectious disease outbreak far worse than Ebola will occur sometime 
in the next 20 years and that the number of outbreaks will become more 
frequent.
  Despite improvements in access to safe water and sanitation, vaccine 
development, and other public health advances to combat infectious 
diseases, an enormous amount of work remains.
  One of the most important lessons learned from the Ebola outbreak is 
that time is of the essence. The lack of a rapid, coordinated global 
response resulted in many preventable deaths. Disease surveillance 
systems were poor or nonexistent in the severely impacted countries, 
there was a lack of trained personnel to rapidly deploy, and no 
effective public communication system was in place to inform and update 
local communities.
  An additional problem was the inability to quickly mobilize 
resources. Countries and NGOs around the globe lacked a reserve of 
available funds. The Congress took a step toward addressing this issue 
in the fiscal year 2017 State and foreign operations appropriations 
bill, which included a $70 million emergency reserve fund to address 
infectious disease outbreaks around the globe. In the fiscal year 2018 
Senate version of the State and foreign operations bill, Chairman 
Graham and I included $130 million for programs to prevent and respond 
to such emerging health threats.
  However, as I have said before and I will say again, far more needs 
to be done to build the public health infrastructure to prevent and 
respond to disease pandemics. As the international community works to 
be more

[[Page 20597]]

prepared for infectious disease outbreaks, the U.S. should continue to 
play a leading role in preparedness planning. Unfortunately, President 
Trump's fiscal year 2018 budget would cut funding for these very 
programs, including for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 
which played an indispensable role in responding to the Ebola and Zika 
outbreaks, as it has to many other international health crises.
  It is time we invest and prepare for pandemics in a similar way as we 
invest and prepare for war, nuclear disasters, or other large-scale 
threats to global security. The potential consequences are no less 
serious. I urge the White House to face up to this reality and 
dramatically increase funding for these programs at CDC, the U.S. 
Agency for International Development, and other Federal agencies that 
play a role in global health security.

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