Many US States Are Ramping Up Anti-Zika Measures

The warmer weather this year is already bringing more mosquitoes, but this year many states are going to be prepared for Zika. State health officials are adamant about stepping up their efforts to stamp out Zika despite a lack of certainty regarding federal funding for Zika research. During the year of 2016 federal health officials reported finding forty four cases of Zika in pregnant women throughout the country. There were also major outbreaks in South America, The Caribbean, Florida and Texas. A CDC report released earlier last month claimed that one out of every ten pregnant women with Zika gave birth to children with birth defects. Last year in the United States seventy seven babies died in the womb as a result of pregnant mothers contracting the virus.

Last month federal health officials working at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta claimed that six states that were heavily affected with Zika will probably lose all of their Zika funding by the end of the summer. This is a big problem for many states because the millions of dollars that was allocated to these states for the purposes of Zika control were meant to be used over a period of five years. Now many state government leaders are wondering what can be done once funding runs out.

The United States Senate has introduced a bill that allows for another one hundred million dollars in funds to go to states fighting the spread of the Zika virus, but the bill has yet to be approved by both houses. Both Florida and Texas have been hit hard by the Zika virus. However, New York is actually the state that was hit second hardest by Zika when considering the over eleven hundred cases of the virus reported within the state.

How hard was your state hit by Zika last year? Do you expect the negative impact of the virus to be worse this year?