Dozens of HIV experts from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention received an email withdrawal from the notification received 10 weeks ago on Wednesday. But damage to the project can be permanent, and continuous restrictions on research will harm life, and many HIV scientists on CDC have told KFF Health News about anonymity because of fear of retaliation.
The researchers were fired just before finishing the finishing touch of the in -depth national investigation of HIV in early April. Health authorities across the country have interviewed tens of thousands of people who are at risk of acquiring HIV or edited information in the medical records and medical records living with viruses.
The state and cities are ready to submit the information collected in April to the CDC, so the statisticians of the institution were able to prepare a large amount of data for analysis.
Health authorities and policymakers use data to design HIV programs that more efficiently suppress infection and save life. For example, A 2023 Survey About half of adults under 30 years of age who live with HIV have not been treated steadily enough to keep their health and prevent the virus from spreading the virus to others. For people aged 50 and older, the treatment rate was much higher. As a result, health authorities have doubled their volunteer activities as a young generation.
But in April, we found that state and local health authorities were blocked by CDC opponents after dismissal. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s e -mail, employees said that their role is “almost the same as the job that is unnecessary or elsewhere in the agency.”
Marti Merritt, a project coordinator of the Illinois Health Bureau, said that she and other staff invested more than a year to darken at the final stage. “The data is like entering a black hole,” she said. “How do you set priorities if you don’t have data?”
Merritt is worried that if the survey is not resumed, the limited budget will be wrong and the case will increase. Data allows the health department to adjust the efforts of the largest risk of infection or disease progression.
Evidence shows that if HIV prevention is infected, it is much cheaper than treating people. Preventing one HIV infection occurs results. $ 466,000 in lifetime savings. Merritt was also embarrassed to have wasting tens of thousands of people who opened up the intimate details of their lives to fight HIV epidemics.
A doctor and HIV expert, who were restored by doctors and HIV experts this week, said that the late end of the survey will be wasteful of millions of dollars of taxpayers already spent on data collection. Two large -scale efforts of medical monitoring projects and national HIV behavioral monitoring systems take about $ 72 million, he said.
If the project cannot be completed, “The 30,000 participants’ two -year data will not be used and will be wasteful.
To resume the survey, the other CDC researchers will need green light in higher places because the subsidies dealing with this survey during administrative vacation in May are over.
State health officials said they did not receive a CDC notice to renew the survey every year in June. Merit has interviewed the medical monitoring project for about 20 years, but the Illinois Health Bureau has now assigned her to other tasks. There are other health bureau fire Alternatively, HIV surveillance staff will also be assigned.
If the researchers who have been restored by HHS can resume the project, you can explain the gap for 10 weeks in the analysis. However, as time takes time, it delays the next survey round.
John Brooks, a retired researcher from CDC’s HIV prevention department last year, said, “These surveys are not lights that are turned on or off. If the survey resumes, he said,” We can get some value from all the money you spent. “
However, the survey will be further damaged by Trump’s actions related to the administrative order.
Experts on CDCs said that the results should be calculated again so as not to revise the previous survey and not refer to the gender. This meant changing data for the two populations that were imbalanced by HIV.
Researchers and doctors said they have recovered from CDC. “I am interested in the transgender patients I see, and it is too painful to see what the government treats in this way.”
The doctor has treated HIV patients since the beginning of the infectious disease in the 1980s, and it is worse than President Ronald Reagan, who has never mentioned HIV publicly in the first semester.
“I lacked funds, but I didn’t try to censor science or control science,” he said.
Many HIV researchers have got a job outside the government after the layoffs in April. Some researchers returning to the institution were embarrassed to reinstate.
The concise email to CDC staff at TOM NAGY, the human capital officer of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, reviewed by KFF Health News, simply refers to a notice of forced reduction and says, “The notice has been canceled.”
Andrew Nixon, director of HHS Communication, said, “HHS is simplifying operations without compromising mission critical work.
“We couldn’t work, but this time we are getting wages this time, and if you are a dedicated civil servant, it is not good.
We want to talk to the components that believe that the current and all employees of the Ministry of Health and Welfare should understand the effects of what happens in federal health bureaucracy. (415) 519-8778 or Contact here.
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