WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama called on Congress Saturday to step up funding to combat the Zika virus, warning that delay is putting more Americans at risk.
Obama's latest appeal, in his weekly radio address, came the day after the US authorities expressed deepening worry about the spread of the mosquito-borne virus, urging that all donated blood be tested for Zika.
The Congress has denied past administration requests for Zika funding, instead redirecting funds that had been earmarked to fight Ebola, cancer and other diseases.
"That's not a sustainable solution," Obama said. The delay for more funds "puts more Americans at risk."
Congress "should treat Zika like the threat that it is" and "fully fund our Zika response," he added. "A fraction of the funding won't get the job done. You can't solve a fraction of a disease."
Zika infections in pregnant women can cause a severe birth defect known as microcephaly, in which babies develop abnormally small skulls and brains.
More than 2,500 people in the United States have been diagnosed with Zika, along with more than 9,000 in Puerto Rico and other US territories, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most of those cases were brought in by people infected while traveling abroad.
There are 584 pregnant women on the US mainland with lab evidence of Zika infection, and 812 in the US territories.
Florida in July announced its first cases of locally transmitted Zika, with 42 infections.
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