Political Quotes

“And the explosion of drug-resistant TB in sub-Saharan Africa threatens to halt and roll back our progress in combating both diseases. The legislation supports key TB-HIV activities, such as providing AIDS patients with TB screening and treatment, and providing TB patients with proper counseling, testing and treatment for HIV/AIDS. Finally, the legislation authorizes assistance for the development of new vaccines for TB. The current TB vaccine is more than 85 years old and is unreliable against pulmonary TB, which accounts for most of the worldwide disease burden. New TB vaccines have the potential to save millions of lives and would lead to substantial cost savings. Studies modelling the 10-year economic benefits of a vaccine that is 75 percent effective have estimated worldwide savings in medical costs of $25 billion or more. I strongly urge my colleagues to support this bill. This is a very, very important bill.”