The race for a vaccine

In 1953, there were 35,000 annual cases of polio in the United States. Mothers and fathers all across America were frightened that their children would be next to contract the dreadful disease. Two researchers, Drs. Albert Sabin and Jonas Salk, were locked in a historic race against time to develop a safe and effective polio vaccine. They were both successful. Today, those vaccines have virtually eliminated polio around the world.

In 2016, millions of parents in dozens of countries around the world are again hoping that the medical community will be catalyzed to develop a vaccine for today’s global disease threat: the Zika virus.

{mosads}Zika is terrifying. It is the only known mosquito-borne virus that can cause birth defects and also be sexually transmitted. It can lead to a condition called microcephaly, which causes smaller brains and other developmental defects in newborns. Zika has
also been linked to neurological impacts in individuals of any age. One bite from an infected mosquito could damage the course of a life forever.

In today’s new race for a cure, there are three leading vaccine candidates. In August, I toured the labs at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, which is collaborating with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. They have a vaccine candidate that has been found to offer universal protection against the Zika virus in laboratory tests using rhesus monkeys. The results of initial tests were so promising that the vaccine will be tested in a small group of people this fall. There are two other vaccine candidates also showing positive results, one made by the National Institutes of Health and the other by Inovio Pharmaceuticals. Both are far enough along that they are already utilizing human subjects.

If the current trials involving just the small groups are successful, we will need to provide much more funding to cover the costs of testing the vaccine on thousands of participants. That next step in the Zika clinical trials will cost at least $200 million. But this is a small amount when one considers that the cost of caring for one infant born with Zika-caused microcephaly will cost a minimum of $10 million throughout its lifetime.

We are in a race against time and money. The number of confirmed locally acquired Zika infections in Florida has tripled, totaling now 46. In Puerto Rico, it is estimated that 50 pregnant women are infected with Zika each day. There are now 67 countries and territories around the world reporting Zika cases. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has announced that the agency has exhausted its current funds to combat Zika. But congressional Republicans have refused to provide any new funding for this race to find a vaccine.

After President Obama requested nearly $1.9 billion in federal funding this spring to combat the spread of Zika, congressional Republicans blocked any progress toward reaching a funding agreement. Then Republican leadership did the unconscionable; it recessed Congress for seven weeks in the heat of summer, while the Zika case count in Florida, Puerto Rico and around the globe ticked higher and higher. It is only a matter of time before the fear of local transmission in Florida becomes reality for every state in our nation.

I saw the devastating impacts of the Zika virus when I visited Africa in August and met with mothers and their infants suffering from microcephaly. We won the race against polio in the 1950s. With accelerated funding, we have the opportunity today with these three candidates to find a safe and effective Zika vaccine by 2018. With Congress now back in session, the Republicans should stop playing partisan politics and help to ensure that our 21st century Sabins and Salks have the funding they need to banish this virus to the history books.

Markey is the ranking member of the Africa and Global Health Policy Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.