WASHINGTON - Nine former heads of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have sounded the alarm, saying that the policies of US President Donald Trump's administration are putting the nation's health at risk.
They released a statement in an open letter published by The New York Times on Monday.
"What the health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health system over the past several months - culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director days ago - is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced," the statement read.
The authors of the letter include former heads of the US health department under both Republican and Democratic administrations, reported Sputnik/RIA Novosti.
"Secretary Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programmes designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused on unproven 'treatments' while downplaying vaccines," the letter also read.
On August 21, The Hill reported that at least 600 CDC employees have been cut as part of the Trump administration's spending cuts.
Kennedy Jr had previously announced a 20,000-person workforce cut as part of reforms under the auspices of the US Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE).
In early July, federal judge Melissa DuBose in Rhode Island blocked the administration's plans for mass layoffs and a major reorganisation of the health department. - BERNAMA-SPUTNIK/RIA NOVOSTI