TB Bill Needs Final Push for Passage

Contact Your Members of Congress to Educate Them About the TB Bill

The domestic TB bill, the Comprehensive TB Elimination Act, S. 1551/H.R. 1532, sponsored by Sens. Brown (D-OH) and Hutchison (R-TX) and Reps. Green (D-TX) and Wilson (R-NM), is awaiting a Senate vote and a vote in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Sen. Brown will bring the bill to a floor vote in September. It is critical that the bill is passed by the end of September, before Congress recesses for the election. Some Republican Senators have said that they must hear from their constituents about the need for the bill before they will vote for it.

Breathe New Hampshire hopes The House Energy and Commerce Committee, chaired by Rep. Dingell (D-MI), will schedule a vote on the bill in September. Chairman Dingell supports the bill, but Republican members of the committee, including Rep. Deal, have not agreed to move the bill yet.

Summary of the Comprehensive TB Elimination Act, S. 1551/H.R. 1532
The bill, sponsored by Reps. Green (D-TX) & Wilson (R-NM) and Sens. Brown (D-OH) & Hutchison (R-TX), will provide increased funding for the CDC's National Program for the Elimination of Tuberculosis, including funding for state TB control programs, and expand research on TB diagnostic and treatment tools at the National Institutes of Health and CDC. The bill will intensify targeted efforts to prevent, detect and treat the disease among African Americans and expand detection of TB at the U.S.-Mexico border and treatment of binational TB cases.

Talking Points

• TB is one of the leading infectious disease killers in the world, taking over 1.7 million lives per year.
• The 2006 case of Andrew Speaker, the drug resistant TB patient who traveled between the U.S. and Europe, illustrated that the U.S. is vulnerable to drug resistant TB.
• The current funding level for CDC's Division of TB Elimination represents a more than 25% decrease over the past decade when adjusted for inflation. As a result of the lack of funding, state TB programs are ill-equipped to respond to drug resistant TB and to eliminate TB in their states.
• New tools are needed to more effectively prevent, diagnose, and treat TB.
• The standard method of diagnosing TB is over 100 years old and fails to adequately detect TB in children and those co-infected with HIV/AIDS.
• The newest class of TB drugs is over 40 years old and is inadequate for combating drug resistant TB. H.R. 1532/S. 1551 will ensure that the U.S. is prepared to respond to outbreaks of drug resistant TB and will reinvest in TB research to find faster, easier and more effective diagnostics, drugs and vaccines to control TB.