23 hours Ago By Zachary Stieber
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has ended a committee that advised it on infection control. The termination of the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee was done in accordance with one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC’s parent agency, told The Epoch Times in a May 8 email. The order stated in part that advisers such as the assistant to the president for domestic policy needed to identify “governmental entities and Federal Advisory Committees that should be terminated on grounds that they are unnecessary.
” “CDC is committed to maintaining the highest standards of infection control and will continue its mission to protect public health and collaborate closely with healthcare professionals and partners,” the spokesperson said. The spokesperson referred further questions to the White House, which did not return an inquiry. The CDC’s webpage for the advisory committee has been removed.
The advisory committee had been working on advising the CDC on updates to multiple guidelines, including standards on preventing transmission with masks and other isolation precautions. Dr. David Weber, one of the members of the panel, and the president of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, told The Epoch Times that ending the committee was disappointing and concerning.
While the committee served in an advisory capacity, and the CDC makes its own guidelines, “it certainly helps to have the people who are responsible for implementing these on the front lines give their expertise to the CDC,” Weber said. The move “creates a preventable gap in national preparedness and response capacity, leaving healthcare facilities without timely, evidence-based and expert-driven recommendations at a time when threats from emerging pathogens and antimicrobial resistance are on the rise,” they said, adding later that “the absence of this committee’s guidance creates a significant void in the field, fosters uncertainty among healthcare facilities, and put patients at risk.”.
