Sen. Barbara Mikulski Budget cuts in the past decade to the National Institutes of Health have hampered the U.S. response to the disease in Africa, according to the NIH director, who said "if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would've gone through clinical trials and would have been ready." The Centers for Disease Control has had its emergency preparedness budget cut nearly in half since 2006.