State and Federal Public Health Funding Cuts Are Making Measles Outbreaks Worse
And so is RFK Jr!
We are seeing measles outbreaks that are bigger and harder to control these days.
Can you guess why?
Sure, a lot of it is because the larger outbreaks are occurring in areas with an awful lot of unvaccinated children and adults.
But that’s not the only reason.
The RFK Jr Factor
No, it doesn’t help when few if any public health leaders are telling people to get vaccinated and protected.
Of course, that’s the one thing that would stop these outbreaks and prevent new outbreaks from starting…
Or that so many important jobs at the CDC and other public health agencies were cut.
State and Federal Public Health Funding Cuts Will Make Measles Outbreaks Worse
It also doesn’t help though, that funding has been cut to many of our public health programs that respond to these types of outbreaks.
“Americans are losing a vast array of people and programs dedicated to keeping them healthy. Gone are specialists who were confronting a measles outbreak in Ohio, workers who drove a van to schools in North Carolina to offer vaccinations and a program that provided free tests to sick people in Tennessee.”
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South Carolina, for example, the center of the largest measles outbreak in over thirty years, had their public health funding cut by over $100 million last year!
And much of that money would have gone to immunizations and vaccines for children and laboratory capacity for prevention and control of infectious diseases.
Similarly, in NYC, their department of health budget was also reduced by over $100 million last year.
Unbelievably, public health departments in Texas lost funding while they were in the middle of their large measles outbreak too!
“Austin Public Health is losing millions in funding and 27 full-time employees due to cuts at the federal level, the agency's director said.”
Austin Public Health loses $15 million to federal grant cuts
Funds that were being used to help control the measles outbreak.
In the Lone Star state, for example, Director and Health Authority for the Dallas County Health and Human Services Phil Huang said the department has laid off 11 members of its full-time staff and 10 part-time individuals who were a part of the agency’s epidemiology group, including data and health IT workers.
Those staff cuts leave health officials concerned about their ability to manage disease outbreaks amid “the lack of support being available to us from CDC,” Huang said, pointing to the measles outbreak in Texas that has infected more than 400 people, the majority of whom are children and teenagers, since January.
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Now, instead, ‘they’ will have to come up with money to pay for these outbreaks…
And of course, there were all the cuts to global public health programs to think about…
What Happened the Last Time We Cut Funding for Vaccines?
Do you remember the last time a US President cut funding for vaccines?
Do you remember what happened?
I do.
It was when President Reagan essentially cut funding for vaccines in his 1987 budget.
This was just after President Jimmy Carter and his National Childhood Immunization Initiative in 1977 would reach its goal of immunizing 90% of children and get measles under good control!
Tragically, it didn’t have to happen.
Rep. Henry Waxman even warned that if we followed through with President Reagan’s budget, then kids wouldn’t get vaccinated and measles would return.
And, of course, he was right.
Large outbreaks of measles hit a few years later, beginning in 1989.
And kids began dying with measles again.
When you think about, these outbreaks shouldn’t be happening now either!
More on Public Health Funding Cuts
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Austin Public Health loses $15 million to federal grant cuts
Trump administration cuts health services funding in Texas amid measles outbreak
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