Assemblymember Rudy Salas (D-Bakersfield) introduced Assembly Bill (AB) 1279, which directs resources toward Valley Fever, a disease that affects residents in counties throughout California.
Specifically, AB 1279 allocates $2 million for research and will establish guidelines for reporting cases of Valley Fever.
"Valley Fever has been reported from almost every county in California but 75 percent of cases have been found in people who live in the Central Valley and that is alarming," said Assemblymember Salas.
According to the Center for Disease Control, between 1999 and 2011, the rate of infection of Valley Fever in California rose more than 600 percent, from 939 cases in 1999 to 5,697 cases in 2011. Through June 2016, Kern County reported 890 cases compared to 1,174 for the entire year of 2015. In the first month of 2017, there have been 26 confirmed cases of Valley Fever in San Luis Obispo County resulting in two deaths.
"The responsibility for identifying and warning the public of widespread diseases falls on local public health agencies, some of which have no set guidelines for defining epidemics. AB 1279 will invest in research and help health officials more accurately understand the disease."
Inconsistencies in the reporting of cases make it difficult to target resources. Furthermore, California does not currently have an official statewide method of tracking the rate of Valley Fever infections. For example, last year the California Department of Public Health reported that Kern County logged 455 cases. Kern County itself, however, reported 890 cases to The Bakersfield Californian. In addition, reports of people infected with the disease from the CDC have never exceeded 23,000 cases nationwide, despite expert estimates that the disease infects more than 150,000 people across the Southwest alone, with 50,000 being sick enough to require medical attention.
