A part of the World Health Organization has received only 12 percent of the funding it has requested to fight Zika in the Americas.
The WHO’s Americas partner, called the Pan-American Health Organization, has requested $25 million from its member countries but has received $3 million to fight Zika so far, WHO Director Margaret Chan said during a press conference Tuesday.
“Financial support for WHO and for other partners as well as for supporting countries is truly a big challenge for all of us,” Chan told reporters in Geneva.
The problem comes as Zika has spread to more than 30 countries in the Americas and in other countries and territories around the world.
Chan said the WHO is in active discussion to get an additional $4 million from partners to the Americas health group. Some of the money would be used to send experts to the affected countries and to do diagnostic testing.
Globally the WHO asked for $56 million to fight the Zika virus, which WHO officials strongly suspect is linked to a birth defect called microcephaly. Zika may also be behind a neurological disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome.
Chan said she has talked with her colleagues from the U.S. who have been providing support to affected countries. Chan didn’t disclose the agencies she spoke with but said “they are very stretched.”
Her comments come as Congress is debating President Obama’s nearly $2 billion emergency funding request for Zika. The funds would go to help reduce the mosquito population, as mosquitoes primarily spread Zika through biting people.
The money also would be used for clinical trials to develop a vaccine for Zika in the next few years.
But Republicans have been reticent to approve more funding, saying the administration should use the $1 billion that is left over from the money doled out for the Ebola outbreak.
The administration has responded that a majority of those funds are already committed to other countries in Africa and Asia to build up their healthcare infrastructure.
