The Trump administration has taken actions to dismantle established public health infrastructure as part of its second-term agenda.

The Trump government has not spared health as it wields the axe to US government departments.

The administration began with a widespread purge of the federal public health workforce.
As of February 19, around 5,200 employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health had been sacked. The administration has indicated there will be additional firings.

It also removed key CDC websites and databases that are the first stop for health information for health care practitioners, and which are vital to protecting the U.S. from infectious diseases, like avian flu and COVID-19, as well as non-infectious health conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease.

Prior to these cuts, the CDC employed over 10,000 full-time staff in roles spanning public health, epidemiology, medicine, communications, engineering and beyond to maintain critical public health infrastructure.

Dr Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, called the cuts at the CDC “indiscriminate, poorly thought-out layoffs” that would be “very destructive to the core infrastructure of public health.”

“CDC is the health warning system for the United States,” Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist and author, told National Public Radio.

“CDC needs change but doing it so drastically and so aggressively with an axe instead of a scalpel is incredibly dangerous to the biosecurity in the
United States.”