And good morning. You the subcommittee today and him and him and the subcommittee today examines the center for Disease Control anthrax incident last month that potentially exposed dozens of from you potentially exposed dozens of researchers to live and you and anthrax because established cdc policies were not followed. You last friday, the director and you and you announced corrective actions being taken. Are you corrective actions being taken. The review identified a fundamental flaw the agency had no written plan to ensure the safety of workers and proper handling of live biological you agents. The department of agriculture agriculturetment of the disinfectant they used was expired. This is troubling, and completely unacceptable. The center for Disease Control is supposed to be the Gold Standard of the u. S. Public health system, and it has been tarnished. We rely on cdc to protect us, but the recent anthrax event and incidents have raised serious questions about the cdc ability to
I have a question also relating to financing. I want to know what you consider the role and impact of the new Bricks Development bank will be Going Forward as it starts in south africa and other countries can then apply to be part of this new development. Thank you. Ill let them talk about the brics bank because, ive heard about it, they set it up a few months ago and what it is, im not sure. Measurability, now we talk a lot about revolution in africa that we dont know. The problem has been a lot of things have happened in mdgs, but we dont have the instruments to measure them. We have 80 of kids in school. With 90 of this or that, but how do we measure them . Sometimes were rely on numbers given by multinational and multilateral, but sometimes by ngos who have an interest in keeping numbers as they are. Thats what they get their funding from. We have to be aware that. The finance minister has had a meeting. When the president first talked about the cap, it was at a meeting with the mi
That lets people know when thers been a problem there . There are multiple alarm systems within cdc. In this case, it was a crosscontamination of a culture. So somehow, and we havent figured out how yet, a relatively low virulence Avian Influenza was crosscontaminated with the highly pathogenic h5n1. Is there any evidence of cover up here from employees not wanting to let someone else know that no. Weve seen at this point no evidence of a cover up, but we do see the need to strengthen the culture of safety that encourages reporting. Anytime theres a problem or potential problem so we can assess it and take rapid and prompt action. Thank you. I now recognize ms. Degette for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Dr. Kingsbury, let me just make sure i heard your testimony right. You testified that theres an increasing number of labs that are handling these bioagents, correct . Correct. And you said theres really no one agency in charge. Is that correct . Correct. Now, in you said that to
Too many blind spots and weak links in places in africa and elsewhere. We have large amounts of travel and animal human interface and large members of people. All three of the cdc components and all of the components are so important. The cdcrelated components are domestic and stopping ebola and preventing the next ebola through the global work. I know its a few weeks ago and they are four individuals from cdc in guinea. France is taking the lead on Ebola Response in this country because the United States needs to take a more leadershipactive role or does it have the capacity to do so . Excuse me. For the cdc specific response, we provide a comprehensive Public Health approach in each country. As of today, we have approximately 175 staff on the ground. We have the most staff in sierra leone. We also have more than 20 staff or roughly 20 in guinea. We get the french speaking staff and we have 12 as of today dealing with that cluster and trying to stop it at the source. What are about en
They are almost complete and they are very optimistic that they start next phase of the trial with both of those vaccines in west africa. This slide indicated that there was a third company, but they were not expected to engage in phase one trials until the fall of 2015 which is a substantial ways away from where we are today. There other potential vaccine candidates in the pipeline. We are supporting some of those. They are behind this timeline and we are right now focused on trying to figure out if these vaccines are and effective and if they are, get them into use to control the epidemic in west africa. Part of the emergency funding request will be 157 million for barta to continue to accelerate the development and manufacturing of vaccines and therapeutics for the outbreak. My understanding from talking to the folks at new link genetics is these Clinical Trials that have been ongoing at walter reed and the national sn institute of allergy and Infectious Disease, there is good rappo