New York Times: White House Hails Success of Disease-Fighting Program, and Plans Deep Cuts
“…The National Security Council released a report on Monday trumpeting the achievements of the multinational Global Health Security Agenda, which helps low-income countries halt epidemics before they cross borders. The report ‘clearly shows how the investments made by taxpayers to improve global health security are paying dividends,’ White House officials said in the announcement. But the United States is set to dramatically shrink its contributions to the initiative, a point that the report omitted. … Over all, Mr. Trump’s February budget proposal offered the CDC, the United States Agency for International Development, and the Defense Department’s health security programs about the same funding those agencies received between 2006 and the Ebola crisis, ‘objectively inadequate for the agencies’ activities’ since the outbreak, said Jennifer Kates, who studies global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. … At a health security panel on Monday, Dr. Anne Schuchat, the acting director of the CDC, said, ‘The administration, CDC, the partners across government, and the private sector are very keen for us to not lose the progress.’ She added, ‘It’s a few years ago, but people remember Ebola’…” (Baumgaertner, 3/13).