UNIDENTIFIED MAN: For thousands of years, the Guinea worm parasite has caused disabling misery.ĭOUCLEFF: That's a promotional video from the Carter Center, which has led a 30-year battle against the painful disease. Eradication was in reach, but a few years later, polio made a comeback.īLOCK: Officials at the WHO are concerned about polio outbreaks in Pakistan, Syria and Cameroon.ĭOUCLEFF: Eradication was slipping away just as another disease neared the finish line - Guinea worm. The number of polio cases around the world had plummeted. MELISSA BLOCK, BYLINE: Now the decades long fight against polio has reached what public health officials hope is a final showdown.ĭOUCLEFF: That's NPR's Melissa Block. MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF, BYLINE: Back in 2012, everyone in global health was talking about polio - the end of polio. This year, two diseases got tantalizingly close, but unexpected roadblocks have popped up. That's only been done once before - smallpox. The way to win is to eradicate a human disease. But Moore says they’ll keep trying.There's a race on. That money hasn’t made it into any disaster bills yet - including the funding request the white house just submitted to congress. Jess Moore, chief of staff to Republican Congressman Tom Rooney, said her boss has been meeting with federal agriculture officials and GOP leaders, “to plead with everyone who will listen to him on the urgency and necessity of providing immediate relief to Florida’s agriculture industry, specifically the citrus industry.” Hurricane Irma made landfall in southwest Florida and plowed north through the state’s agricultural heartland with 100-mph-plus winds, causing more than $750 million in damage to the citrus industry alone, according to an assessment by the state department of agriculture. So members of Congress from disaster-struck regions have to lobby their colleagues who control the purse strings. “The Federal Treasury is strained, things are all coming at once, congressmen and the president many look like they’re not wanting to spend a lot of money.” “It then gets into politics,” said Adam Rose, an expert on disaster economics and public policy at the University of Southern California. Local and federal officials are looking at bridges, hospitals, levies, neighborhoods, then coming back to Congress and the Administration and saying what it’ll cost to rebuild. “Even in a place like Houston, that has significant infrastructure for city and state services, doing a fairly comprehensive survey could take months,” Richards said.Īnd that’s where we are now. Then technical experts swoop in to start assessing longer-term needs for repairs, reconstruction, and risk mitigation for the next natural disaster, he said. “At the first pass, you basically want to fill up a big bucket of money for FEMA to do acute relief – to provide food, shelter, temporary housing,” Richards said. Puerto Rico alone has been reported needing $94 billion, a need the White House has said will be addressed separately, later.īut how do economic cost estimates from a disaster get turned into legislation?Īs soon as a disaster appears on the radar, FEMA starts spending money to pre-position emergency personnel and supplies.Īfter the disaster, FEMA and local agencies kick into gear to start delivering relief, said Edward Richards, director of the climate change law and policy project at Louisiana State University Law School. Texas, Florida, and especially Puerto Rico say they need tens of billions of more in funding to help recovery efforts. Among other things, it would cover FEMA disaster assistance to individuals and local governments, fixing federal facilities, and flood prevention.īut the request is already under fire as not offering enough money to affected areas. The funding request, if passed by Congress, would provide another $44 billion, bringing the total of supplemental disaster-relief spending authorized by congress this calendar year to around $96 billion. The Trump administration has asked Congress to pass the third disaster-relief spending bill this year in the aftermath of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, and the devastating California wildfires.
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