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Final item from us tonight. Hillary Clinton paid a visit earlier to a health clinic in Miami, the epicenter of the Zika outbreak in the US, and appealed to Republican leaders to convene an emergency session of Congress to pass funding to combat the mosquito-borne virus, reports Sabrina Siddiqui in Washington.

The Democratic nominee used the bully pulpit of the presidential campaign to voice her frustration with lawmakers in Washington, who left town last month for a summer recess without meeting the federal government’s request for funds to fight the spread of the Zika virus.

“I am very disappointed that the Congress went on recess before actually agreeing on what they would do to put the resources into this fight,” Clinton said. “And I really am hoping that they will pay attention.”

Clinton delivered her remarks following a tour of the Borinquen Health Care Center, a community clinic in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, which has borne the brunt of Florida’s Zika outbreak. The state of Florida, a key battleground in November’s presidential race, has been the most severely hit by the virus, which poses the greatest threat to pregnant women due to its cause of birth defects such as microcephaly.

Clinton said she first learned of Zika in December through her daughter Chelsea, who was pregnant at the time with her second child.

“We don’t want to wake up in a year and read so many more stories about babies like the little girl who just died in Houston,” Clinton said, citing a fatal case of Zika-related microcephaly reported out of Texas on Tuesday.

“That is just not something we should tolerate in our country.”

The Obama administration requested a $1.9bn spending package several months ago, basing its figure on the needs of public health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The request quickly devolved into partisan politics on Capitol Hill, as House Republicans instead passed a measure that included riders to overturn certain clean water regulations, restricted money for Planned Parenthood and undermined the health care law. Senate Democrats twice filibustered the House-passed proposal, which Barack Obama has also said he would veto.

Republicans have in turn accused Democrats of blocking the necessary funding and on Tuesday took aim at Tim Kaine, the Virginia senator and Clinton’s vice presidential running mate, for voting against their Zika bill. Clinton urged lawmakers to put aside politics and advance a separate bipartisan agreement that cleared the Senate in June and would allocate $1.1bn in funding with no strings attached.

She also took aim at Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has ignored the Zika virus all together and told a local television station in Florida he did not need to opine on the issue because the state’s governor, Rick Scott, had it “under control”.

“I disagree with those who say that Zika is an insignificant issue,” Clinton said. “This is something we need to take seriously.”

Contrary to Trump’s claims, Scott, a Republican who has endorsed the nominee, has sounded repeated alarms over the Zika outbreak. He, too, implored US lawmakers to return to Washington and address the funding gap.

“The federal government must stop playing politics and Congress needs to immediately come back to session to resolve this,” Scott said on Tuesday, as Florida’s health department identified four more individuals who likely contracted Zika through a mosquito bite.