The best way to save lives and prevent outbreaks of threats like Ebola is water in health facilities.
Not only are we wasting billions of dollars in health care costs and lost productivity, we’re undercutting our most effective front-line defense in disease prevention and containment.
Containing the West African Ebola outbreak took years, cost billions, and claimed more than 11,000 lives in three countries.
Health crises can become catastrophic when illnesses and diseases, easily prevented with soap, clean water and basic sanitation, instead spread and require treatment with overused and misused antibiotics.
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We need to make medications free Getting WASH into health care facilities is doable.
When I served as Senate majority leader, I drafted legislation to formalize U.S. policy addressing the overall lack of safe water and sanitation in developing nations.
For the first time ever, we officially made access to safe drinking water, basic sanitation and hygiene a stated objective of U.S. foreign assistance.
The time is now.
Congress needs to support the Senate’s recommended $35 million increase in 2019 funding for the Water for the Poor Act (the law we passed, which was strengthened in 2014 as the Water for the World Act).