HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said she will divert federal funds to support efforts to develop a Zika vaccine.
In a letter sent to congressional leaders, Burwell said about $34 million will come from research funds for other illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease, diabetes and cancer.
An additional $47 million from other agencies will go to the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. The agencies that will lose funds are the Administration for Children and Families, which provides assistance to poor families, as well as the CMS and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
It's a move Burwell described as necessary in light of Congress' failure to approve President Barack Obama's $1 billion request to combat Zika. The virus has infected more than 7,300 in the U.S. and its territories as of Aug. 3, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Without diverting funds, she estimated funding both the National Institutes of Health and BARDA would exhaust all resources for Zika research by the end of the month.
“Reallocating NIH resources is not consistent with a strategy to provide maximum support to the important work that our nation's leading scientists are performing,” Burwell wrote. “But the lack of a clean, bipartisan Zika funding bill has left me no choice but to move forward with this action at this time.”
Calls for Congress to return from a seven-week summer recess and pass a Zika spending bill have grown since the first locally transmitted cases were confirmed in South Florida.
