dr. redd: chairman, ranking member, and distinguished members of the committee, my , directorephen redd of the office of public health preparedness and response at cdc and it is my pleasure to appear today to discuss the work of cdc to prepare and respond to theats to the help of public. as you know, cdc works to protect the public costs helped by helping communities improve readiness and response. this is for chemical, biological, radiation emergencies, whether those are intentional, naturally occurring events, like the ebola epidemic, or the zika virus epidemic, or accidental. there are two benke programs at cdc that enable us to prevent, detect, and response to health threats. the public health emergency preparedness program and the strategic national stockpile. originsgrams have their before september 11, and the and the racks -- the anthrax attacks. they were expanded after those events, and recognition of the need to improve the ability of the public health system to .espond in scale and

dr. redd: it is something we continue to work on. to take the particular case of zika, there are many aspects of this that are unprecedented. it has been 50 years since an infectious disease has been identified as the cause of a birth defect. there has never been a birth defect caused by an infection transmitted by a mosquito. the historicalse record, this is not something we would have predicted. i think there is a need to be able to forecast more effectively than we have been able to do. i totally different problem with ebola, although, the event that occurred in west africa was also not predicted. that event, had we had in place the systems that are put in place now, we would not have had the event that we had. what we arer to seeing now, with similar detection and response to a problem. -- toooker: i want more submit one more question for the record about preparedness. i like the idea that preparedness is not an event, but an ongoing process. about the states running a lot of tabletops for

dr. redd? okay. great. thank you. dr. redd? >> chairman johnson, ranking member carper and distinguished members of the committee, my name is stephen redd, i'm director of the office of public health preparedness and response at cdc and it's my pleasure to appear today to discuss the work cdc is doing to prepare and respond to threats to the health of the public. as you know, cdc works to protect the public's health by helping communities improve readiness and response. this is for chemical, biological, radiation emergencies, whether those are intentional, naturally occurring events like the ebola epidemic or the zika virus epidemic or accidental. there are two key programs at cdc that enable us to prevent, detect and respond to public health threats. the public health emergency preparedness program and the strategic national stockpile. both had their origins before september 11th and anthrax attacks of 2001. they were greatly expanded after those events in recognition of the need to improve t

dr. reddk you explain how you make sense of where we are, where our needs are and what you would like to see? >> yes, thank you for that question. just to be clear, so i am acting director of research authority as our name implies, we work in the area of advanced research and development and we understand that term. it means -- when we were working these are medical countermeasure that is have reached the clinical stage of development and many of the problems relate to the testing of the product as well as scaling up manufacturing and working up manufacturing issues to we can be able to produce the product at large scales. we have to depend on our -- our colleagues at the national institutes of health and the department of defense to fund that basic research. we don't fund basic research, and it's very important for us to coordinate our efforts within so that as they cultivate products and bring products forward in the early stages of development, we are ready to transition those products to a

dr. reed. is it redd or reed? >> redd. >> the program, because cdc is looking for additional money to allocate for zika that, you know, we've seen money being taken away from the states including new jersey, which raises concerns that we are moving around a finite pool and that that might be weakening our preparedness. can you explain for cuts, were they sort of blunt cuts across the board or are we looking at the crises and concerns for safety and security? >> let me start by saying that i agree with your underlying -- your underlying point, which is this is a new threat. that would address the problem in the way that it needs to be addressed. >> that's a very profound statement that i want to repeat one more time. you agree that this is a new threat and should be making supplemental funding as oppose to taking needed dollars from currently existing programs? >> yes, sir. >> that is a definitely important statement, thank you. >> in the absence of that, there is a very difficult decision that the administration h

dr. stephen redd, says the zika virus is a new threat. he made the remarks over the senate homeland security and governmental affairs committee on the state of the nation's defense against biological threats. some category here -- from capitol hill, this is just under two hours. >> good morning. this hearing will come to order. i want to thank the witnesses for taking the time to attend,