The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS, in English) has identified more than 100 federal advisory committees that has “scheduled to eliminate”, including panels that provide advice on infant and maternal mortality, organ transplants, blood products, falciform anemia and research on cancer.
The measure responds to an executive order of the president, Donald Trump, who seeks to reduce the size of the “federal bureaucracy.” The affected committees are not established by Congress, but provide a forum for medical and scientific experts to meet and advise the agency on health care policies.
NBC News obtained the complete list of the advisory committees.
An email sent to the agency staff on Friday afternoon asked employees to indicate if any of the committees was “Absolutely necessary” And, if so, that they described the specific administrative priority that was being fulfilled, why the Committee is essential, if it is of public interest, and confirm that the director of the agency agrees that it should not be dissolved.
They hope that measles outbreak lasts months
As the cases of measles in western Texas continue to increase two months after the outbreak began, local public health officials say they hope that the virus will continue to spread for at least several more months and that the official number of cases is probably underestimated.
But there is a positive side, officials say: more people have received the measles vaccine, papers and rubella (MMR vaccine) this year in Texas and New Mexico, which also has an outbreak, compared to last year, even if it is not as high as they would like. And pharmacies throughout the United States, especially in Texas, are seeing a greater demand for MMR vaccines.
The measles outbreak in Texas had reached this Friday the 309 cases, in addition to having caused a death.
The number of cases in New Mexico reached 42 and also a death. In both states 42 people have been hospitalized.
The outbreak in Texas, which has spread mainly in Mennonite communities with low vaccination index, could last a year according to studies on how measles previously spread in Amish communities in the United States. These studies showed that the outbreaks lasted six to seven months, said Katherine Wells, director of the Department of Public Health at Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock hospitals have treated most outbreak patients and the Department of Public Health is closely helping.
“Being so rural, now multiestatal, it will simply require much more work in the field, much more effort, to control the situation,” Wells explained during a press conference this week. “It is not an isolated population.”
The outbreak includes 14 Texas counties, two counties from New Mexico and four probable cases in Oklahoma, where health officials said the first two were “associated” with the shoots in the west of Texas and New Mexico.
Measles is one of the most contagious diseases in the world. The way in which the virus is propagated makes it especially difficult to contain and the shoots can have multiple peaks, said Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at the Global Gillings School of Public Health of the University of North Carolina.
Many people spread the measles virus without knowing it For days before the characteristic rash appears. The virus can also remain in the air up to two hours after a sick person has left a room.
If the outbreak extends until next January, it would end the condition of the United States of having eliminated measles, which is defined as 12 months without local transmission of the virus, said Dr. William Moss, a specialist in infectious pediatric diseases at Johns Hopkins University and executive director of the International Center for Access to Vaccines.
“We only have been for three months. I think that if we had a strong response where the message was clear that measles vaccination is the way to stop this outbreak, I would be surprised if it lasts 12 months or more,” said Moss, who has worked on measles for 25 years, mainly in Africa. “But we are not seeing that type of response, at least by the federal government.”
The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on the other hand, He has sown doubts about the measles vaccinewhich has been used safely for more than 60 years and is 97% effective after two doses. In an interview with Fox News last week, Kennedy said MMR vaccines cause “deaths every year”, although he added that vaccinations should be promoted.
With information from NBC News and
