April 25,
1996
Testimony by
Chuck
Woolery, Director
Communication for Health Campaign
Before
Congressman
Sonny Callahan
Chairman of
the
Foreign Operations Subcommittee of Appropriations
U.S. House of Representatives
Regarding
Funding for International Health and Development Programs for Preventing the
Spread of Infectious Diseases.
Thank you for allowing me as the Director of the
Communication for Health Campaign to testify today regarding the prioritization
of US foreign aid appropriations.
The World is in great change. Within the context of this change, the
appropriations made by this Subcommittee now constitute the basis for
maintaining the security of the American people. In the past, this Constitutional mandate was
carried out by military strength.
Today, military strength alone can no longer protect Americans from the
foreign threats now approaching and breaching our shores.
The disturbing trend of new and re-emerging infectious
diseases puts public and global health squarely in the realm of national
security interests. Numerous reports
document the threat infectious diseases pose to American lives and prosperity,
and identify them as a threat that will only grow in the coming years. The rate and magnitude of that growth has been
determined by our past neglect of poverty, environment and public health
concerns. Our continuing failure to
address a host of critical international problems within this specific context
promises us almost certain catastrophe.
For some, the catastrophe is already here in the form
of HIV/AIDS or multidrug-resistant Tuberculosis. These two diseases already consume a large
portion of our nation’s health expenses.
AIDS was first recognized as a US problem in the early
1980s. If we had been more interested in
international health threats earlier, we could have started research to combat
the AIDS virus as early as 1962 when it was first recognized by African
physicians as the “slims” disease.
After three decades of decline, TB in the US
re-emerged as a major public health problem in the late 1980s. Targeted federal funding brought it back
under control but still, in 1995, TB outbreaks were investigated in churches,
schools, dental offices, court rooms, trains, subways, neighborhood bars,
racetracks and even on a river boat casino.
Until we control TB globally, we will continue to pay the expensive
price for outbreaks here. One outbreak
in New York City in 1993-1994 cost the city over $90 million. The world devotes less than half of that
annually for the global control of TB.
Infectious diseases spreading in US hospitals kill
more Americans each year than all the American troops lost throughout the
entire Vietnam conflict. A significant
number of these ‘domestic’ infectious diseases were imported from the harsh
conditions of poverty abroad. As these
conditions worsen, the number and variations of microbes will continue to grow
and move with the aid of modern transportation. The actions of this Subcommittee, in regard
to development and humanitarian assistance will have the greatest impact on the
future security of the American people and control of these impending
threats.
The cost of stopping microbial threats at the gates of
our cities or at our water's edge is no longer a practical option. A handful of microbes can be stopped at the
border but the vast majority cannot. It
would be prohibitively expensive to stop, test and quarantine every human or
foreign product that crosses our borders or air space every day. Reducing infectious diseases, terrorism,
pollution, or even unemployment in America now requires our pro-active efforts
to extend beyond US boarders. Prevention
there is far cheaper than dealing with these problems at our borders or in our
cities. That is the new profound
opportunity of this Subcommittee - to impact the conditions of global poverty
and chaos, that are the primary fuel feeding the health, economic,
environmental and security threats now facing this nation.
The Communication for Health Campaign and NCIH
represent over 120 member organizations including the American Medical
Association, the American Public Health Association, American Dental
Association, the American College of Preventive Medicine, the American Nurses
Association, the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, 9 Schools of
Public Health and dozens of other international medical and health related
organizations. These organizations and
thousands of individual health care professionals urge this Subcommittee to
re-examine its fundamental priorities in this new ‘national security’
context.
This Subcommittee took two steps forward last year by
establishing the "Child Survival and Disease Account”. Unfortunately, it took a large step backward
when it failed to appropriate sufficient funds to achieve its own
recommendations. The ‘Child Survival
and Disease’ earmark of $484 million falls $127 million short of the levels it
recommended for Child Survival ($254 million), UNICEF ($100 million), Polio
($25 million), AIDS ($129 million), and Basic Education ($108 million). If we consider the absence of other
expenditures needed to cure or prevent tuberculosis, provide clean water and
sanitation, slow the spread of malaria and other tropical diseases, and support
other vital health related programs, the total appropriated will be stretched
even further. USAID could divert other
aid resources to meet these specific health needs but cannot do so without
taking away from other vital programs; that in the long run, bring health,
security and stability in the Third World, and ultimately to our shores. Family planning and microenterprise programs
are also important contributors to the health of individuals and
communities. Support for democracy and
human rights also have an impact in reducing the chance of conflict that so
often halts and even destroys health services.
The 52 words of the Preamble to our own Constitution
now provide the perfect and most urgent rationale to solve this dilemma.
"We the
people of the United States in order to form a more perfect Union, establish
justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote
the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of
America."
Nearly every American would agree that the primary
role of any legitimate government is to provide for the defense of its
citizens. Reductions in development
assistance over the last few years however, have reduced our health defenses,
and dramatically increased our risks.
Article 1.
Section 8. of the Constitution says that “The Congress shall have Power to lay and
collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for
the common defense and general welfare of the United States..."
It does not suggest that the common defense and
general welfare of the American people should be sacrificed to balance the
budget. That is indeed the scenario now
being played out.
It is not hard to imagine a health crisis in this
country where even Article 1. Section 9
of the Constitution “...The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus” would need
to be “suspended”, when “the public safety may require it.”
Article
IV. Section 4 of our
Constitution states that “The United States shall guarantee to every State
in this Union a Republic Form of Government, and shall
protect each of them against Invasion; ...”
The Constitution does not specify invasion from what. I believe it is not a stretch of the
imagination to claim that the framers of our Constitution had the protection of
American citizens in mind when they agreed to this wording. This Article has now been violated by the
entry of AIDS, malaria, dengue fever, ebola, tuberculosis, cholera and perhaps
a dozen other pathogens; and unfortunately, this is only the beginning. Legal and illegal immigration certainly plays
a role in the transportation of disease, but the greatest source of
cross-border transport of pathogens is the result of legal domestic travelers
dressed in business suits, army uniforms, and tourist or holiday attire. More than 50 million people cross the US
border each year. Nearly half of the
food we purchase and place on our kitchen table each evening has been imported
from nations where the cheapest labor is hired for harvesting and processing
the crops.
Stopping the flow of people and goods would be
prohibitively expensive if not impossible.
Yet at any given time approximately one-half of the world’s population
is ill. The heaviest concentration of
pathogens is found in the developing world where fewer than half the world’s
people try to make a living on less than $400 a year. It is in these parts of the globe that we
must implement comprehensive, preventive measures if we want to provide the greatest
safety for American citizens.
Article VI says
“...This Constitution and the laws of the United States...shall be the supreme
law of the land.” We are hopeful that
the next law this body passes will reflect its solemn duty to provide for the
defense and welfare of the American people.
Over the last 50 years, the US Government has devoted
trillions of dollars to a cold war to protect us from the possible threat of a
communist aggressor. While that threat
remains a remote possibility today, we are guaranteed an onslaught of
infectious diseases in the near and not too distant future. This is not my opinion. It is the findings of a National Academy of
Sciences Institute of Medicine report published 3 years ago. Since then the world has suffered an
outbreak of bubonic plague in India, Ebola virus in Africa and new variations
of tuberculosis within the US that are resistant to every antibiotic we now
have in our health arsenal. Perhaps
this Subcommittee could provide the bold leadership needed to commit the US to
a “hot war” to ensure our freedom from fever.
How easily we forget that the largest killer and disabler of men, women,
children and even the unborn in the world is simple malnutrition and infection. Our reliance on the progress of science to
protect us has betrayed us. The progress
of pathogens to adapt to our arsenal of medicines promises to be the fight of
our species. It is truly an “us against
them” war that needs to be waged. We
can destroy the majority of them at their base camp by ridding the world of the
poverty related conditions in which they multiply, thrive, and strengthen.
For the cost of a pair of B-2 bombers (bombers the
Pentagon says it doesn’t want or need) we could launch such an offensive. This minor investment could eradicate many
diseases and greatly reduce our risk to a host of others. No number of additional B-2 bombers can do
that.
In the closing paragraphs of The Coming Plague,
aptly entitled “Searching for Solutions”, Laurie Garrett writes:
“The human world was a very optimistic place on
September 12, 1978, when the nations’ representatives signed the Declaration of
Alma Ata. By the year 2000 all of
humanity was supposed to be immunized against most infectious diseases, basic
health care was to be available to every man, woman, and child regardless of
their economic class, race, religion, or place of birth.
But as
the world approaches the millennium, it seems, from the microbes’ point of
view, as if the entire planet, occupied by nearly 6 billion mostly impoverished
Homo sapiens, is like the city of
Rome in 5 B.C. “The world really is
just one village. Our tolerance of
disease in any place in the world is at our own peril,” Lederberg [Nobel
laureate for discovery of DNA] said.
“Are we better off today than we were a century ago? In most respects, we’re worse off. We have been neglectful of the microbes, and
that is a recurring theme that is coming back to haunt us.”
In the
end, it seems that American Journalist I.F. Stone was right when he said,
“Either we will learn to live together or we will die together.”
While the
human race battles itself... the advantage moves to the microbes’ court. They are our predators and they will be
victorious if we, Homo sapiens, do not learn to live in a rational global
village that affords the microbes few opportunities. It’s either that or we brace ourselves for
the coming plague.”
This new
reality requires a radical shift in the way Americans relate to each other and
to the rest of the world. More weapons
will not bring us more security. In fact
just the opposite may now be true.
More
Might! More Fright! More Plight!
In the modern world of disorder and dissolving nation
states, the more US Military superiority we have, the less US national security
we actually gain. Maintaining or
increasing US military strength has at least 4 negative consequences on the
health of US citizens. First, military
spending usually distracts scarce financial resources from meeting basic human
needs. Every billion dollars spent
today beefing up our military against a possible human aggressor means a
billion dollars less for the programs essential to protecting Americans from
the aggression of infectious diseases.
It is true that a small portion of military spending is spent in
combating infectious diseases and more spent here could certainly be
helpful. However, more B-2 bombers or a
new space based anti-missile defense system is just plain wasteful, in the face
of this new threat.
Second, military units stationed abroad always return
home bringing whatever health problems they have with them. There may be as many as a quarter million
troops stationed overseas at any given time.
Their interactions with foreign populations, combined with their rapid
and regular travel habits contribute to globalizing health problems. Sexually Transmitted Diseases, AIDS,
anti-biotic resistance and a host of other communicable diseases are now in the
pipeline.
Another increasingly important effect of ‘military
might’ affecting public health falls in the category of terrorism. As our military gains an undisputed level of
superiority, we squelch the possibility of any overt enemy attack on our
shores. This squelching of overt
aggression however, only increases our risks to covert aggression by any
hostile individual, group or nation.
The bad news: The ultimate
weapon of affordability, ease of delivery, and effective human destruction is
microbial in nature. In the Conference
report on the Anti-Terrorism bill passed last week, a Senator suggested that if
this bill passed, it would help protect the American people. This is a dangerous myth. We are all entirely vulnerable to the misuse
of lethal or crippling pathogens in nearly every aspect of our lives. Any moderately intelligent person can find at
least a dozen ways to infect hundreds if not thousands of people. A 98 cent plastic misting bottle from any
drug store, a dose of salmonella from any blend of raw eggs and a 20 second
pass around any popular salad bar is just one example. The Tokyo subway nerve gas attack last year
killing 12 and injuring over 5,000 wasn't particularly creative (nerve gas in a
paper bag). The fact that members from
this same sect went to Zaire posing as relief workers responding to the 1995
outbreak of ebola is, however, truly terrorizing. Imagine the consequences in America if the
unibomber, the Oklahoma City bomber or the Trade tower bombers had any training
in basic microbiology.
Senator Hatch reminds us that the “possession of dangerous
human pathogens, such as bubonic plague, anthrax...are...readily available to
just about anyone...” The December 30,
1995, Washington Post has a story with a headline that leaps off the
page: `Man Gets Hands on Bubonic Plague Germ, but That's No Crime.' The story
is more chilling than the headline. In Ohio, a white supremacist purchased
three vials of
the bubonic plague pathogen through the mail. This was the same pathogen that wiped out
about one-third of Europe in the Middle Ages. When the purchaser called the
seller to complain about slow delivery, the sales representative got concerned
about whether the caller was someone who really should have the bubonic plague
in his possession. According to the story, the Ohio authorities were contacted.
When police, public health officials, the FBI, and emergency workers in space
suits scoured the purchaser's house, they found nearly a dozen M-1 rifles,
smoke grenades, blasting caps, and white separatist literature, but no bubonic
plague. The deadly microorganisms were
found in the glove compartment of his automobile, still packed as shipped...”
Investments in research on pathogens and the
development of targeted treatments is a viable responsibility of government
involvement. We cannot wait for the
market place to catch up with the mortality rate of Americans.
With the current level of global poverty, rapid means
of global transportation and general lack of resources directed at improving
the human condition, terrorists really don't have to do much of anything. Our own lack of basic human services here for
the US homeless and below-poverty populations means the spread of disease by
normal factors is already a disaster waiting to happen.
The fourth military factor is related to 'peace
keeping' and 'nation building'. These
traditionally non-military roles carry a certain element of risk by increasing
American troop exposure to foreign populations.
Keeping peace and increasing a nation’s capacity to meet the immediate
needs of its people is however, the best way to prevent or eliminate the
chaotic conditions that give favor to pathogens in the first place. International involvement carries a risk but
it is a far greater risk to allow war and chaos to disrupt the health and
well-being of any population. US
military capacity is still needed to protect us from an array of the
traditional military threats but they can no longer alone protect American
lives. Even the Military recognizes this
fact.
CISET Report:
Perhaps the most alarming, comprehensive and credible
warning related to this issue, came last summer from the Committee on
International Science, Engineering, and Technology (CISET) Working Group. A report, co-authored by the Department of
Defense, the National Security Council and the Center for Disease Control and
Prevention, and a dozen other federal agencies, documented the emergence since
1973 of at least 30 new pathogen types and the re-emergence of dozens of
previously controlled infectious diseases.
The report places infectious disease issues in the realm of national
security.
“...any city in the world is only a plane ride away
from any other. Infectious microbes can
easily travel across borders with their human or animal hosts. In fact, diseases that arise in other parts
of the world are repeatedly introduced into the United States, where they may
threaten our national health and security.
Thus, controlling disease outbreaks in other countries is important not
only for humanitarian reasons. It also
prevents those diseases from entering the United States, at great savings of US
lives and dollars.”
(CISET report is available:
http://www2.whitehouse.gov/WH/EOP/OSTP/html/cisetsum.html
For a copy of the report call CDC, 404-639-2603 or fax
your request to 404-639-3039.)
[Updated 10-10-14
http://clinton1.nara.gov/White_House/EOP/OSTP/CISET/html/toc-plain.html]
Other
Sources:
A Washington Post article last June also
pointed out that among all the infectious threats, the problem of increasing
drug resistance may be the most serious, and America is no safe haven.
Antibiotic resistance is on
the rise...A few pay in illness and death.
The bill is going up every year... Once emerged, resistant bacteria
spread quickly, sometimes via a single infected person traveling between countries. Similarly rapid diffusion occurs in the
microbial world [when] resistance...can pass from bacterium to bacterium,
evolving in one enterprise, such as agriculture, and soon showing up in an
unrelated one, such as medicine. In the
United States, resistance is everywhere - in childhood ear
infections, in venereal
diseases, in TB, in surgical wounds and among the 60,000 deaths each year from
hospital acquired infections. In the
developing world, antibiotics are the most common pharmaceuticals, and they
often can be bought without a prescription.
Many people take them when they're not needed or don't take them long
enough to cure an infectious completely.
Such practices, combined with high rates of infectious disease, make
developing countries especially fertile breeding grounds for drug resistance.
In one high-profile example,
the outbreak of dysentery that killed up to 15,000 Rwanda refugees last summer
might have been less deadly if the strain of Shigella dysenteriae hadn't been resistant to five common antibiotics...
Epidemics, however, are not
what experts fear from drug resistance.
Instead, they fear the slow erosion of history's most useful
medicines...They fear that treating simple illnesses will become onerous and
expensive, and that the number of mild illnesses taking complicated turns will
rise.
"The old people in the
nursing homes are going to die, and the young kids with ear infections are
going to progress to mastoiditis, sinusitis, meningitis," said Calvin M.
Kunin, a professor at Ohio State University School of Medicine and past
president of the Infectious Disease Society of America. "I think there
ought to be a new organization called MAMA, Mothers Against the Misuse of
Antibiotics. Because it's the mothers'
children who are going to die."
...About 150 million courses
of oral antibiotics are prescribed each year in the US. Childhood ear infections are the single
leading reason...Some experts estimate that as many as half the prescriptions
written for antibiotics in the US are not needed or warranted on diagnostic
grounds...
Whatever their source,
drug-resistant germs are now such an unavoidable part of the environment that
children get them as birthright. In a
study published five years ago, researchers analyzed the intestinal bacteria of
infants and toddlers in three separated locales. They found that 42% of sample from children
in Qin Pu, China, were resistant to three or more antibiotics. Multiple-drug resistance was found in 30% of
children sampled in Caracas, Venezuela, and in 6% of children in Boston. None of the children had recent exposure to
antibiotics.
...For reasons that are quite
mysterious, some microbes develop resistance to many antibiotics
simultaneously...
One of the more important
disease-causing bacteria in human beings is called Streptococcus pneumoniae.
Its resistance to penicillin is a huge problem in Europe and a growing
one in the US. Penicillin-resistant S. pneumoniae, however, was originally
found in Papua New Guinea. In the late 1960s,
the Australian army gave New Guinean villagers monthly penicillin shots in
order to prevent yaws, an infection resembling syphilis that is spread by
casual, not sexual, contact. Over time,
the campaign created a large human population in which penicillin-resistant S. pneumoniae could flourish. ...
... The best documented
example involves the spread of penicillin-resistant S. pneumoniae in Iceland.
The bug surfaced in Iceland in December 1988, at a hospital in
Reykjavik. DNA fingerprinting revealed
that it was similar to a strain found in Spain, a popular winter vacation
spot. Within 3 years, 20% of the S. pneumoniae in Iceland was
resistant...apparently all descended from the single Spanish import...
As a threat to public health,
S. pneumoniae is currently the
greatest object of concern. The
bacterium is the leading cause of illness and death from infection in the
US. It is responsible for roughly 7
million cases of ear infection, 500,000 cases of pneumonia; 50,000 cases of
bloodstream infection; and 3,000 cases of meningitis each year...Inevitably,
though, a greater number of cases will become "complicated"...
Each year in this country,
about 2 million cases of infection are contracted by people while they are in
the hospital. The problem is far more
common than in the past, as critically ill patients are kept alive, many
connected to tubes and ventilators that give microbes easy portals of entry.
A common cause of these
infections is a family of bacteria known as the enterococci, which infect
surgical wounds, the urinary tract, the heart and bloodstream. ...these germs
have developed resistance to a half-dozen antibiotics. However, they remain susceptible to
vancomycin, an expensive and occasionally toxic intravenous antibiotic...
The biggest cause of hospital
acquired infections - the family of Staphylococcus bacteria -- is currently
resistant to everything but vancomycin in 40% of cases in large teaching
hospitals. Experts fear the day that
drug becomes useless in staph infections -- though few doubt it will
arrive.
Nearly every
multidrug-resistant TB organism evolved in patients who stopped taking their
medications early or took them sporadically.
Changing both patients and doctors habits would slow the emergence of
resistant strains and might even turn back the clock in some cases...
"The Abuse of Antibiotic: Bacterial resistance
evolves". Washington Post, June 26, 1995
Last year,
about 25,000 people between the ages of 3 and 49 died of unexplained causes in
the US -- but with symptoms that suggested microbial infections...
“Budget Cuts Slow Agencies Fighting New Bacteria
Strains” Washington Post, June 27,
1995
Cost
effectiveness of Development dollars:
Development is far cheaper than defense. Even the strategic planners in the military
now figure that preventing and resolving conflict is far cheaper, in both lives
and dollars, than waging war. Healthy
populations also tend to be better consumers of American goods and
services. Thus the importance of public
health and prevention of disease. Global
disease eradication efforts also have a significant domestic return on
international investments. For each of
these reasons, increases for development assistance can be justified on
economic grounds alone. But the
security rational is far more important.
Cuts to development assistance have troubling side effects. One of our members, upon return from the
refugee camps in Bosnia noticed a decrease in cooperation among private
voluntary organizations. She made me
aware of the fact that cuts to development assistance decrease the overall
effectiveness of our relief efforts.
Shrinking moral is one small factor.
Another consequence is the increased competition between PVOs and NGO’s
for scarce donor dollars. Competition may be increasing the effectiveness of individual
PVOs, but it is detrimental to the larger scale cooperative efforts needed to
effectively deal with development and relief problems. Making sufficient government money
available, and strengthening the mechanism for delivering US aid abroad could
reduce this competitive problem.
USAID plays an important role here and continues to
work closely in collaboration with WHO, PAHO, PHS/CDC, NIH and others in a
number of areas, and is producing cost-effective health improvements. CDC, WHO and USAID bring collaborative
partners to the table, thus sharing the benefits of worldwide and local
expertise and reducing the cost borne by any one partner.
It is vital to keep overall funding for development
activities at a level that will allow AID to continue to support
internationally-coordinated efforts.
Since 1993, such funds, though a relatively small amount of the AID
budget, have been in decline.
Cooperative funding activities, including work on HIV/AIDS through WHO,
the Global Program on AIDS, and the new independent UNAIDS program, is
estimated to decline by one-third between FY94 and FY96, from a level of $40
million to about $27 million, of which HIV/AIDS funding still accounts for at
least two-thirds of the total.
The latest
in infectious diseases:
Last month the British beef industry was crippled
(almost eliminated) because of a pathogen 'scare'. The economic cost alone could be as high as
$2 billion dollars. Last week, Ebola
related primate deaths in Alice, Texas resulted in the need to kill hundreds of
other primates. Aside from this loss of
life, this incident cost both business and government, a few hundred thousand
dollars. The media will probably spend more
than that covering this particular isolated and relatively insignificant health
threat, yet the real story is not being told.
These are not 'isolated' incidents.
They are an increasing trend in the global spread of infectious diseases
that requires our utmost attention and response. It is a trend that holds the capacity to
bring life as we know it to a grinding halt.
The bright
side: If we respond
to the trend appropriately and adequately it could propel all of humanity into
a long, healthy and prosperous future.
Benjamin Franklin long ago reminded all of us that
preservation of our form of government depended on our constant vigilance. The trend of new and re-emerging diseases is
a threat to our people, and our way of life.
These global warning signs require more than constant vigilance.
The choice is yours and the time is now. We urge this Subcommittee to recognize this
growing threat for what it is; a threat worthy of top priority concern. Any less would be a form of negligence in
protecting the national security of this nation and the lives of the American people.
For this Subcommittee to protect the American people,
there are at least four basic areas requiring adequate and immediate
action.
1. The need for
surveillance is quite clear. A global
network of adequately supplied, staffed and trained health posts capable of
monitoring and reporting health conditions of even remote populations.
2. The capacity
to response quickly and adequately to any and every outbreak of infectious
disease.
3. Research and
development to ensure our capacity to respond to any outbreak be it accidental
or intentional.
4. Elimination
and prevention of the conditions that breed and foster infectious
diseases. Poverty is perhaps the
greatest culprit. Unlike other attempts
to address poverty from a humanitarian perspective, any new effort must be
comprehensive and eternally supported.
Because this subcommittee determines appropriations
that will impact each of these areas, you have the greatest capacity to defend
this nation’s security. You can advance
our most basic values and provide for our most basic security by focusing your
fullest attention on last area mentioned.
Ensuring that every man, woman and child on earth has at least the basic
necessities (nutrition, clean water, sanitation,
education and basic health services) for a healthy
existence will not ensure total safety from infectious diseases. It would, however, greatly reduce this
growing threat.
Last year:
Despite the most restrictive budget limitations, last
year this Subcommittee found the resources to increase funding for at least 3
foreign aid programs, in the context of 'national security'.
This House Subcommittee on Appropriations passed its
FY'96 bill with increases for:
Foreign
Military Financing Program (FMF)
increased by $13 million.
Int'l
Military Education & Training (IMET)
increased by $13.5 million.
Economic
Support Fund (ESF) increased by $42
million
OPIC increased
by $35 million
TOTAL non development aid increases: $103.5
million
Last years cuts to development assistance programs
averaged over 25%. A 25% reduction to
FY'95 levels of the favored programs listed above could yield $1.408 billion --
more than enough to meet the development goals that most of this nation's
citizens are aligned on; nutrition, primary health care, water and sanitation,
family planning, basic education, microenterprise lending...
Last year the Senate Foreign Operations Subcommittee
attempted to shift Department of Defense dollars into the foreign aid budget to
increase funding for IMET. The time for
this funding source to be considered in the context of infectious national
security threats has arrived.
The economic
benefits alone that will result from improving the quality of life
for people internationally cannot be overemphasized. The cost savings to this government and the
American people from the global eradication of smallpox has been well
documented. Our cost savings from the
global eradication of polio and measles will be even more bountiful. Combine this with the increase in US jobs as
result of increased US exports to a healthier, more prosperous international
markets and we could balance our federal budget well within a safe time line.
These decisions are always difficult, and we have a
history of ignoring warning signs prior to crisis. An example was the reduction of defense
appropriations prior to the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. But I can tell you that the cost of that
negligence will be insignificant compared to the cost if these microbial trends
are also ignored.
In conclusion, the effectiveness of pathogens can be
attributed to one simple trait. They are
basically non-discriminatory. Most
pathogens are blind to their victim’s nationality, income level, political
party, skin color, age or sex. Until we
Americans, as humans reach the same level of indiscrimination regarding who
benefits from our foreign assistance, we may soon find ourselves on the bottom
of the food chain. As Nobel Laureate,
Dr. Joshua Lederberg says, to pathogens we're all just "another piece of
meat". This Subcommittee is our
best defense.
For more information contact Chuck Woolery,
240-997-2209, email: chuck@igc.org
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