DALLAS NEWS | The Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported that Ebola is still a top-tier global health concern in Americans’ hearts and minds. Although media coverage has slowed, there is still much work to do in West Africa to curb the spread of the virus that has now killed more than 8,500 people. In a promising step forward, the National Institutes of Health just announced that a vaccine trial will soon be available in Liberia.
Sadly, it took the death of Thomas Eric Duncan to prompt real assessments of how prepared local hospitals are to handle a global outbreak. But as a result, our nation is now more aware and more concerned about the tragic loss of life in West Africa and the broader issues of global health.
More than half of Americans believe that the U.S. government offers more than 26 percent of our annual budget in foreign assistance. The reality: Less than 1 percent of our budget goes to global health and development.
As we’ve seen, health issues abroad have a real impact at home. Years of underfunding global health has allowed a virus like Ebola to become a crisis in Africa and reach American soil. If we had spent even one-tenth of our perceived investment, perhaps we wouldn’t be in this position.
We can’t again wait until the crisis is upon us.
Read more at Dallas News: https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2015/02/12/bill-frist-and-jenny-eaton-dyer-americans-need-to-step-up-on-global-health-issues