Congress Unlikely To Approve Obama's Request For Additional Flu Money, Majority Leader Says

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U.S House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Wednesday expressed skepticism that Congress would approve President Obama's recent request for an additional $2 billion to help fight the H1N1 (swine flu) virus, Reuters/Washington Post reports.

"A pending war funding bill that has already passed the House of Representatives included $2 billion while the Senate version had $1.5 billion," the newspaper writes. "If ... that's insufficient there's obviously an opportunity to pass an additional supplemental" at a later date, Hoyer said, adding, "We want to make sure that we have the funds necessary to respond to this pandemic." Reuters/Washington Post also reports that the White House does not believe the "bills provide the administration enough flexibility to respond to the outbreak of the flu virus" (Polofsky, Reuters/Washington Post, 6/3).

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan on Wednesday encouraged "governments not to overreact to global outbreaks of swine flu as the agency moves closer to declaring the first pandemic in four decades," according to Bloomberg. Instead, "Chan suggested authorities must use the time before swine flu becomes global to revise emergency plans and convey the measures to their countries' populations" (Gale, Bloomberg, 6/4).

This information was reprinted from globalhealth.kff.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at globalhealth.kff.org.

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