The Trump administration is merging a federal office that gives money to HIV testing along with another program, increasing the concerns of scientists about AIDS-Roktham’s efforts.Credit: Kevin Worm/New York Times/Redx/Iwin
The administration of US President Donald Trump has hollowed out one of the federal offices with the aim of ending the country’s HIV epidemic. This step comes as the administration has also cut hundreds of grants for funding of HIV and AIDS research.
Parivartation left the researchers: during Trump’s first presidential post, his administration launched a plan to erase HIV in the United States by 2030.
At the end of last week, many people of the US Office of Infections Diseases and HIV/AIDS Policy lost their jobs, according to a person from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency that oversees the infectious-disease office. The person asked for oblivion as he was not approved to talk to the media. The trimming in the infectious-disease office was confirmed by another source that was familiar with the administration’s efforts to shrink and restructuring HHS.
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In addition, the US National Institute for Health (NIH) has canceled HIV and AIDS Research Funding more than 230 research grants in the last few weeks, according to A. Nature Analysis of a crowded spreadsheet of finished grant. And the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is losing a major office for HIV prevention as part of restructuring.
All of this combines “destructive” cuts for research and HIV services in the United States, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School in Julia Marcus, Boston, Massachusetts, an infectious pathologist of Massachusetts, who have abolished several grants. “Possible results are going to be a revival of HIV”.
In response to questions from NatureHHS issued a statement saying that the infectious-disease office is not closed. The statement stated that instead of working on HIV and AIDS, “Integrated and well -organized” to avoid many offices doing the same work in many divisions “.
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The trump is part of the effort of the Trump administration to reduce the size of the federal government. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Junior announced last week that his agency would lose 20,000 employees, about one-fourth of the workforce. Kennedy has also repeatedly asked the federal government to focus more on chronic disease and focus less on infectious disease.
Been asked by Nature Regarding the administration’s commitment to address HIV and AIDS, a person familiar with the changes in HHS said that the remaining program is going to continue very important work to eliminate HIV. It was a major priority of President Trump during the first administration. “
The HHS infectious-disease office was responsible for abolishing HIV epidemic in the US and coordinating and supporting a policy for minority HIV/AIDS funds. According to US media reports, the office appointed about five dozen people.
When the reports of the sorting came, “I got tears in my eyes,” Carl Schmid, who first co-headed the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS during the Trump administration. “These are the people who have dedicated their lives to end HIV.”
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The person familiar with the HHS reorganization stated that the infectious-disease office is being merged with an HHS program that provides treatment to people living with HIV/AIDS. The person said that he did not know how many people in the infectious office still have a job. CDC’s division of HIV prevention is also being merged with that program, the person said.
But Adrian Shankar, who worked on a health policy during the administration of former US President Joe Biden, says the merger is “deeply problematic”. The existing HHS program focuses on treatment, while CDC’s division focuses on prevention and HHS infectious office coordinates monitoring HIV epidemic across the country. They cannot absorb each other’s responsibilities, calling Shankar. “This is not getting closer to us to end the epidemic,” they say.
Sarah Ziglar, who worked for 20 years as the Associate Director of CDC for the policy by May 2022, fears that the lack of expertise of workers handling other programs will reduce us to prevent HIV prevention. “This is just an additional tragedy at the top of the tragedy,” Ziglar says. “It will hurt people, people will cause dying and will cause significant costs for all of us all over the country.”
