Alzheimers is greater public health crisis than Ebola The Ebola virus is a clear danger to U.S. public health, and our nation’s response – both here and abroad, as unsteady as it has been at times – demonstrates how quickly we can act once we recognize the stakes are high. The administration has now requested $6 billion in funding to address Ebola. From my vantage point as a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Surgeon General, I appreciate the importance of quick action when American lives are at stake. One lesson from this experience is the importance of being proactive. Had we already provided funding to the National Institutes of Health to address Ebola, we might be addressing this crisis with vaccines in hand that would fundamentally change the nature of our response. There are other lessons too, and the most important of them does not even center on Ebola itself. Our nation is facing a far more dangerous public health crisis than Ebola, and the response has been altogether inadequate. While Ebola is a potential disaster in the United States we must address decisively, Alzheimer’s disease is already today a deadly disaster for millions of American families that we have largely ignored. It is a threat to both public health and to our economy. That is what should frighten people. Alzheimer’s is the most under-recognized threat to public health in the 21st century. It is a fatal disease that cannot be prevented, cured or even slowed. And the $6 billion that the Administration just requested? That’s more than the U.S. federal government has spent on Alzheimer’s research over the entirety of the last decade. So far there have been four U.S. cases of Ebola and one death. And while every death is tragic, an estimated 500,000 Americans will die this year because they have Alzheimers disease. But this disease doesn’t stop there. Alzheimer’s care – because we don’t yet have effective treatments – costs the nation $214 billion annually. thehill/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/223922-alzheimers-is-greater-public-health-crisis-than-ebola
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 14:37:30 +0000
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