CDC Staffing Upheaval Disrupts HIV Projects and Wastes Money, Researchers Say

Amy maxmen

Duzines control and prevention centers canceled the notifications they received 10 weeks ago on Wednesday and received e -mail on Wednesday. However, the damage to its projects may be permanent and the restrictions that continue to research will damage lives, a large number of HIV scientists in the CDC, because of the fear of retaliation, the KFF Health News on the condition of anonymity.

In early April, researchers were dismissed just before putting their latest touches on HIV in depth, putting them in national surveys. Health officials throughout the country compiled information from the mountains of medical records that are at risk of acquiring HIV with tens of thousands of people.

States and cities were ready to present the information they collected to the CDC in April, so that the agency’s statistics can prepare their data volumes for analysis.

Medical officials and policy makers use data to design HIV programs that prevent the spread of infections more efficiently and save life. For example, a 2023 Survey He showed that about half of adults under the age of 30, who lived with HIV, did not receive enough treatment to keep them healthy and prevent them from spreading the virus to others. The treatment rates were much higher for those over 50 years of age. As a result, health officials reached young generations.

However, in April, the state and local health officials found that after the layoffs, they cut themselves from CDC colleagues. The Ministry of Health and Human Services said that the roles of the personnel were “unnecessary or almost the same as the tasks carried out in another part of the agency”.

Marti Merritt, a Project Coordinator in Illinois State Health Department, was amazed that he and other state employees have invested for more than a year so that he only invested in the surveys to be dark in the last stage. “The data is like a black hole,” he said. “If there is no data, how do you determine the priorities?”

Merritt worries if the polls do not continue, the limited budgets will be written incorrectly and the cases will rise. The data allows health departments to adapt their efforts to populations under the risk of infection or disease progress.

The evidence shows that the prevention of HIV is much cheaper than treating people after infected. Prevention of a HIV infection $ 466,000 lifelong savings. Merritt was also terrified for wasting the time of thousands of people who opened the sincere details of their lives in the hope of fighting the HIV epidemic.

A doctor and HIV expert, this week, the CDC’s old survey ending late, data collection will be wasted millions of taxpayers already spent for data collection, he said. Authorized, two large, long -standing efforts, medical monitoring project and the national HIV behavioral surveillance system cost approximately 72 million dollars, he said.

“Two -year data from 30,000 participants cannot be used and therefore will be wasted,” the projects said if the projects cannot end.

To continue the polls, he and other CDC researchers will need a higher green light, because the grants covering these surveys ended in May.

State health officials, every June in June, usually renewed CDC notifications, he said. Merritt said that he has been interviewing for the medical monitoring project for nearly 20 years, but the Illinois Health Department appointed him to other tasks. Other health departments dismissed Or re -appointed employees dedicated to HIV survey.

If HHS allows former researchers to continue the projects, they may try to take into account the 10 -week gap in their analysis. But it takes time, delays the next survey tour even – if they start.

John Brooks, a researcher who retired from the HIV Prevention Department of the CDC last year, said, “These surveys are not the lights you opened and closed.” If the surveys continue, he said, iz We can get some value from all the money spent ”.

However, surveys will further deteriorate with the actions of Trump’s executive orders aimed at who researchers are at risk and the words “gender ği that they use to learn why.

Experts at CDC said they had to recalculate the results in order to review the previous surveys and not to resort to gender. This meant replacing data in two populations that were disproportionately affected by HIV: Men who have sex with transgender people and men.

The researcher and the doctor now have restored the CDC. “I care about the transsexual patients I have seen, and it is very hurtful to see that they behave in this way by the government.”

The doctor said that in the 1980s, he has been treating HIV patients since the beginning of the outbreak and that the sting he felt now was worse than President Ronald Reagan, who did not mention HIV in the first period.

“There was a lack of financing,” he said, “But they didn’t censor science or they tried to control science as they did right now.”

Many HIV researchers have worked outside the government or moved since April dismissal. Some researchers who have returned to the agency are called the old state called the old state, because when notifications return, they do not say what to do and how long they will take.

Tom Nagy, who was reviewed by KFF Health News, to the CDC employees from Tom Nagy, the chief human capital department of the Department of Health and Human Services, expresses the notification of the decrease in force only and says, “This notification is canceled here”.

“HHS makes operations easier without compromising critical critical work. Increasing the health and prosperity of all Americans continues to be our greatest priority.”

“Although we are not allowed to work, we receive payment to this time and this does not feel good when you are a private officer,” he said.

We want to talk to the Ministry of Health and Human Services or component agencies that believe that the people should understand the effect of those in the federal health bureaucracy. Please (415) 519-8778 or Contact you here.

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