{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=400747", "Smiths End Tropical Diseases Act Marked Up in Committee, Will Move to House Floor for Vote", "2017-11-15", "2017", "2017-11", "Republican", "House", "NJ", "Christopher Smith", "S000522", "chrissmith.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Congressman Chris Smith\u2019s (R-NJ) bill, The End Neglected Tropical Diseases Act (H.R. 1415), was adopted by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday morning, moving it one step closer to the House Floor for a vote. \r\n          share:\r\n          f \r\n          t \r\n        \r\n      \r\n      Congressman Chris Smith\u2019s (R-NJ) bill, The End Neglected Tropical Diseases Act (H.R. 1415), was adopted by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday morning, moving it one step closer to the House Floor for a vote. \r\n\u201cH.R. 1415 deals with a group of seventeen parasitic, bacterial, and viral diseases which blind, disable, disfigure, and sometimes kill victims from among the more than one billion of the world\u2019s poorest people,\u201d Smith, chairman of the House global health subcommittee, stated on Tuesday.  \r\n\r\n\u201cThese diseases trap the most marginalized communities in a cycle of poverty,\u201d Smith said. \u201cH.R. 1415 will support the control and elimination of NTDs [natural tropical diseases] in the U.S. and abroad.\u201d  \r\n\r\nThe End Neglected Tropical Diseases Act would improve the U.S. response to NTDs like Ebola, rabies, leprosy, and other blinding and disabling diseases afflicting\u00a0 over one billion of the poorest people in the world in the tropical regions like in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.  \r\n\r\nOutbreaks of some of these diseases have also been reported in the U.S. and other developing countries as of late. And they have, in the past, shown an ability to spread and threaten to become pandemics like with the Ebola and Zika viruses, and now with a plague outbreak in Madagascar.  \r\n\r\nSmith\u2019s bill would try improve efforts by USAID to respond to these diseases, and would seek to bring together efforts by various federal agencies and aid programs to develop and distribute medicines to treat NTDs.  \r\n\r\n\u201cThis legislation emphasizes field research by USAID on the impact of treatments that helps future application of often lifesaving medicines,\u201d Smith said.  \r\n\r\nThe bill would also call on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to support centers of excellence for NTD research, training, and treatment.  \r\n\r\nExperts have testified that these diseases are \u201cthe most important diseases you never heard of,\u201d affecting almost all of the world\u2019s poorest\u00a0 which, if left untreated, can keep them in poverty.  \r\n\r\n\u201cThese diseases not only can keep children from attending school and their parents from working, they also cause excessive bleeding by mothers during birth and result in low birth weight babies,\u201d Smith said.  \r\n\r\n\u201cThe most common NTDs can be controlled and eliminated with the application of low-cost donated medicines. However, there is still much work to be done to prepare for currently unknown diseases that may appear on the international scene and to reach the World Health Organization\u2019s control and elimination goals by 2020.\u00a0 To achieve these goals, heightened support is needed now from both new and longstanding partners.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["http://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=400747"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7498560007661581, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}