House Foreign Affairs Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organization subcommittee members today will hear from global health leaders on tuberculosis challenges for the first time in the nearly three years since the World Health Organization announced the disease has become the world’s leading infectious killer.
The Senate Appropriations Committee has firmly pushed back on White House proposals for funding cuts to global and domestic health programs and biomedical research, as the Infectious Diseases Society of America and other organizations concerned with our nation’s health have urged.
Advances in rapid molecular testing mean infectious diseases can be accurately diagnosed in minutes or hours rather than days or weeks and patients can receive appropriate treatment sooner.
The consequences to individual and public health of continuing “zero-tolerance” border policies and of large scale detention of thousands of weakened and vulnerable individuals will be longstanding and far-reaching.
The spending bill released Friday by the Senate Appropriations State and Foreign Operations subcommittee, proposing the first increase in funding for the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in nearly a decade, and the robust increase proposed by the House Appropriations State and Foreign Operations subcommittee for USAID’s global efforts to combat tuberculosis, demonstrate a welcome awareness of the tremendous value of continued U.S. leadership of crucial global health responses.
Praising the treatment policy decision of South Africa health officials to replace painful injections that brought irreversible side effects to many tuberculosis patients whose disease was resistant to first line treatments with a newer medicine that had been proven effective had remained out of reach for most patients, TB response advocates are calling the move “historic,” and also hoping it is just a first step.
MedPAC Support for Balanced Medicare Payments a First Step
House appropriators soundly rejected White House proposals for global and domestic health program and biomedical research funding cuts that would threaten decades of progress in controlling infectious diseases.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly last night to approve the Eliminating Opioid-Related Infectious Disease Act and the Substance Use Disorder Loan Repayment Act of 2018.
New data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention document that invasive methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections occurring in people who inject drugs more than doubled, from 4.1 percent to 9.2 percent between 2011 and 2016.
Highly effective drugs that can cure chronic hepatitis C infection in approximately 95 percent of patients first became available in the U.S. in 2014.
The SECURE Act introduced by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) represents a major step toward preparedness for future public health emergencies.