All staff of the Federal Government Office of Infectious Diseases and HIV / AIDS policy should be dismissed, several federal health officials said on Friday. Movements are part of a wider restructuring plan Ordered by the Secretary of Health and Social Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who involves reducing 20,000 HHS positions.
A large part of the government’s efforts to delay Infantile vaccination rate Nationwide was managed by OIDP, including a new campaign entitled “Let’s Get Real” which had been launched in the last months of the Biden administration to provide resources and information to health care providers speaking to hesitant parents.
“The dissemination of the truth saves lives, so use our resources to help parents understand how vaccines work, why they are safe and how they help protect children,” the ministry said about the campaign after its launch.
The minority health office has also been informed that it should expect to be dissolved, sources said.
However, several officials said that written dismissal opinions had not yet been received by HHS employees.
High federal health officials initially declared on Friday that they expected that official cups opinions were issued in the afternoon, but recognized that the moment of letters could slip in the weekend, similar to the HHS cuts workers wanted by the Trump administration earlier this year.
OIDP, supervised by the office of the assistant health secretary or Oash, had counted around 60 employees at the end of the Biden administration. The cuts occur while the Trump administration tries to merge the other offices in Oash in a new HHS agency called The Administration for a Health America, or Aha.
HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comments on potential layoffs.
The national vaccine program has also been managed by OIDP, which works with an advisory committee to coordinate the department’s agencies to develop vaccines, supervise their safety and increase their availability and use.
The other initiatives supervised by the OIDP include the end of the HIV epidemic in the American program, which was launched by President Trump in his first mandate. We do not know what will happen to these initiatives, for which the Congress had approved funding.
OIDP had previously been among several supervised by the former assistant health secretary Rachel Levine under the Biden administration.
It is not clear if other HHS agencies that had been supervised by Levine, such as the office responsible for updating the federal food directiveswill also be cut. This office had been the target of criticisms as part of the Make America Health agenda in Kennedy.
The new AHA agency would also absorb the administration of drug addiction and mental health and health services Resources and Services Administration, according to an information sheet published by the Ministry.
Who directs the AHA in the long term is not clear. For the moment, the officials have been invited to expect the administrator of HRSA, Thomas Engels, heads Aha.
Kennedy assistants told senior health officials that they were targeting a quick turnaround to launch AHA, with certain implementation objectives to be achieved in the next 10 days.
