Funding cuts could harm global efforts to fight tuberculosis, WHO warns
The World Health Organization warned this week that massive cuts in funding, especially from the United States, could harm the fight against tuberculosis around the world.
The U.S. has annually provided between $200 million to $250 million in funding for global TB programs, making it the "largest bilateral donor," according to the WHO.
In January, President Donald Trump ordered a 90-day freeze on foreign aid delivered through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The Trump administration last week canceled contracts worth about $60 billion in humanitarian work abroad that were funded by USAID and the State Department, including for global health programs.
MORE: Kansas faces one of the largest tuberculosis outbreaks in US history
According to the WHO, these cuts could affect TB response efforts in at least 18 countries, and where it says 89% of "expected" U.S. funding was being used for patient care.
Africa, Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific are the regions hardest hit by TB that rely on funding, the WHO said in a statement Wednesday. Cuts will impact Africa particularly due to staff layoffs and disruptions in treatment, which could cause TB rates to rise, the organization said.
"Any disruption to TB services -- whether financial, political or operational -- can have devastating and often fatal consequences for millions worldwide," Dr. Tereza Kasaeva, director of the WHO Global Program on TB and Lung Health, said in a statement.
TB is a disease caused by a type of bacteria called Mycobacterium tuberculosis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's one of the world's leading infectious disease killers, the federal health agency says.
TB is a preventable and treatable disease, but more than 3,500 people lose their lives to TB every day, according to the CDC.
The United Nations says funding cuts are already causing the dismantling of health services, including layoffs, drug shortages and disruptions to research.
"Without immediate action, hard-won progress in the fight against TB is at risk. Our collective response must be swift, strategic and fully resourced to protect the most vulnerable and maintain momentum toward ending TB," Kasaeva said.
This week, the Stop TB Partnership -- which is hosted and administered by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) -- updated a report on the TB response efforts impacted as a result of halted USAID funding, which include screenings, rapid testing, providing treatment, community monitoring and operational research.
"While some mitigation measures are being explored, the long-term impact on TB care efforts could be severe if funding is not restored promptly," the report stated.
MORE: What to know about TB after outbreak in Long Beach sickens 14
The WHO's warning comes after U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned last week that the U.S. funding cuts would have a devastating impact on humanitarian efforts.
"These cuts impact a wide range of critical programs," he told reporters on Friday. "Going through with these cuts will make the world less healthy, less safe and less prosperous."
On Wednesday, in a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court said the Trump administration must comply with a lower court's order and pay out nearly $2 billion in foreign assistance funds to nonprofit aid groups for work already completed on the government's behalf.
The ruling did not specify a deadline by which the funds have to be paid out, and it's unclear if any of the funds were allocated for TB programs.
Funding cuts could harm global efforts to fight tuberculosis, WHO warns originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Four ways NIOSH's Spokane Research Lab, now facing closure, has improved workers' safety
Jun. 7—Spokane is home to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health's biggest facility in the western United States, where researchers have worked to prevent harm to workers in mining, commercial fishing, wildland firefighting and other dangerous jobs. Now, NIOSH's Spokane Research Laboratory is at risk of closure after the Trump administration notified nearly all its employees in March that their jobs would be eliminated by the beginning of July. Those terminations are on hold after courts in California ruled that President Donald Trump's mass firing of federal workers likely violated the Constitution, but the more than 80 employees in Spokane remain on paid administrative leave and their fate is unclear. Facing pressure from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who leads NIOSH's parent agency, has brought back about 300 of the 900 workers who were terminated — none of them in Spokane. The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to questions from The Spokesman-Review about the rationale for the mass firing and any plans to reinstate more workers. Here are four examples of the research NIOSH employees in Spokane have conducted to improve safety for workers. 1. Protecting oil and gas workers from deadly fumes For years, federal regulations required workers in the oil and gas industry to open hatches on top of huge storage tanks to take samples of the oil inside. In 2013, a doctor at the University of California, San Francisco contacted NIOSH and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a regulatory agency, about the deaths of two of those workers. Working with the physician and OSHA, NIOSH researchers in Spokane used their database of fatalities in the oil and gas industry and found a total of nine similar deaths that occurred from 2010 to 2014. The deceased workers ranged in age from 20 to 63, and coroners attributed most of the deaths to heart disease, with no autopsy conducted in one case, but the NIOSH data showed a clear pattern. The truck drivers and other workers, who often worked alone, were found "collapsed over open hatch" or "slumped over on catwalk next to tank" — all while doing the same job task, "collecting sample" or "gauging." After NIOSH researchers identified the pattern of deaths, all likely due to workers opening a hatch and being engulfed in a plume of hydrocarbon gases and air that lacked oxygen, they worked with other federal agencies and the oil and gas industry to implement new regulations and safer methods of gauging the tanks' contents. 2. Detecting airborne silica to prevent lung disease in miners At hard-rock mines like Lucky Friday in the Silver Valley east of Coeur d'Alene miners can't get to valuable minerals without blasting, crushing and grinding a lot of crystalline silica, the most common mineral on earth. But when a miner breathes in silica dust, it damages the lungs and causes silicosis, an incurable disease that causes severe breathing problems and can lead to death. Currently, the standard method of measuring airborne silica involves sending a sample to a lab and waiting days or even weeks for a result, said Art Miller, a particle scientist who researched silica detection at the Spokane Research Lab until he retired in 2020. Miller and his colleagues at NIOSH facilities in Spokane and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, have worked for years to develop faster methods of detecting dangerous levels of silica dust. The researchers have developed a tool that produces same-day test results, but a project in Spokane to create a wearable, real-time silica monitor that would immediately alert workers to dangerous levels of dust is now in jeopardy. 3. Making commercial fishing vessels safer The NIOSH facility in Spokane houses the agency's research on maritime safety, covering waters from Alaska's Bering Sea to the Gulf of Mexico, which the Trump administration recently renamed as the Gulf of America. After a 15-year-old boy working on a shrimp boat in the Gulf died in 2012 when his clothing got caught in a winch, the Coast Guard asked NIOSH to look into the prevalence of such entanglements and find a solution. Researchers found 35 severe injuries, eight of them fatal, had occurred on shrimping vessels between 2000 and 2011 when workers got entangled in winches used to haul nets out of the water. NIOSH designed guards to fit several common winch models and made them available to shrimpers. The crab fishing season in the Bering Sea, made famous by the reality TV show "Deadliest Catch," has long been one of the world's most dangerous workplaces. From 1990 to 1999, an average of eight crab fishermen died each season. When NIOSH researchers analyzed the fatalities, they found that most were caused by boats capsizing because they were overladen with crab pots as they raced to maximize their catch in the brief season. Based on those findings, the Coast Guard began enforcing limits on crab pots, and fatalities in the still-dangerous industry fell to an average of one per year in the following 15 years. 4. Keeping miners safe deep underground The Lucky Friday Mine in Mullan, owned by Coeur d'Alene-based Hecla Mining, has the deepest mine shaft in the world at more than 9,500 feet underground. The mine shut down for more than a year and required more than $30 million in upgrades after a rock burst and other accidents killed two miners and injured seven others in 2011. NIOSH's Spokane Mining Research Division has worked with companies to improve safety at Lucky Friday and other hard-rock mines in the western United States for decades, developing techniques and technologies that have been applied by miners around the world. Brad Seymour, a NIOSH mining engineer and union steward in Spokane, started researching ground support methods to prevent deadly collapses in 1986, when the office was part of the now-defunct U.S. Bureau of Mines. Early in his career, he helped to improve cemented backfill techniques — filling underground voids with mill tailings and other material to prevent collapse — at the Cannon Mine in Wenatchee. Those improvements were adopted by other mines, he said, helping fuel a gold mining boom in Nevada in the 1990s and now improving safety and efficiency at North Idaho mines like Lucky Friday and the Galena Complex. Orion Donovan Smith's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Nearly 11 million Americans would lose insurance under Trump's tax bill, analysis says
About 10.9 million Americans would lose health insurance coverage under the President Donald Trump's tax cut bill that cleared the House but faces a tough test in the Senate, a new analysis shows. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said about 10.9 million Americans would lose health insurance coverage through 2034 under the bill, including 1.4 million undocumented residents who get coverage through state-funded programs. The legislation that cleared the House would require nondisabled Americans on Medicaid to work at least 80 hours per month or qualify for an exemption, such as being a student or caregiver. The bill also would strip coverage to immigrants who get Medicaid through state-funded programs. The analysis said the bill would cut federal spending by about $1.3 trillion through 2034. But it would also deliver tax cuts of $3.75 trillion, and the federal deficit would increase nearly $2.4 trillion over the next decade. Health analysts said if the Medicaid changes as well as tweaks to the Affordable Care Act marketplace clear Congress, the effects on health insurance coverage would be significant. The CBO earlier estimated nearly 4 million people would lose health insurance coverage through 2034 if Congress did not extend sweetened COVID-19 pandemic-era tax credits that have made ACA plans more affordable for consumers. Trump's Medicaid overhaul as well as the expiration of the more generous ACA tax credit could jeopardize health insurance coverage for nearly 15 million people, said Kathy Hempstead, a senior policy officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "We're making a giant U-turn here," said Hempstead. "Are we really going to be a thriving, productive society if we have a huge share of our population uninsured?" Hempstead said the uninsured might delay care and accrue more medical debt. She also said hospitals and doctors also will take a financial hit as uncompensated care rises. "There's going to be a big hit on on the health care economy as people stop getting care and start trying to get care that they can't pay for," Hempstead said. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: CBO says 10.9 million to lose insurance under Trump tax bill
Fox News
3 hours ago
- Fox News
Obama WH physician says Biden doc should have performed cognitive test
Former President Barack Obama's White House physician said in a new interview that former President Joe Biden's doctor should have performed a cognitive test to evaluate his fitness to serve in office. Obama's doctor, Jeffrey Kuhlman, told The Washington Post that Biden White House physician Kevin O'Connor should have performed a cognitive test during Biden's last year as president, given his age. O'Connor, who Kuhlman first appointed as Biden's doctor in 2009 when he was vice president, declared in a 2024 report that the then-81-year-old president "continues to be fit for duty." The report did not mention any neurocognitive testing. "Sometimes those closest to the tree miss the forest," Kuhlman told the Post. "It shouldn't be just health, it should be fitness," Kuhlman said. "Fitness is: Do you have that robust mind, body, spirit that you can do this physically, mentally, emotionally demanding job?" Kuhlman, who departed the White House Medical Unit in 2013, described O'Connor as "a good doctor" who appeared to do his best to "give trusted medical advice." "I didn't see that he's purposely hiding stuff, but I don't know that," Kuhlman told the Post. "Maybe the investigation will show it." President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate whether Biden's aides "abused the power of Presidential signatures through the use of an autopen to conceal Biden's cognitive decline and assert Article II authority." "This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history," the order says. "The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden's signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts." "Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency," Biden said in a statement Wednesday night. "I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn't is ridiculous and false." Trump's order appeared to nod to the findings of special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated Biden's handling of classified documents while he was vice president. In a report released in February 2024, Hur concluded Biden "willfully retained and disclosed" sensitive materials but should not stand trial, describing the president as a "sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." Hur cited instances when Biden could not recall key dates and events, including when he served as vice president and when his son, Beau, passed away. The report was released at a time when Biden was still planning a second term run. Last week, House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., issued a subpoena for O'Connor to appear for a deposition at the end of the month "as part of the investigation into the cover-up of President Joe Biden's cognitive decline and potentially unauthorized issuance of sweeping pardons and other executive actions." The committee re-posted the Post's interview with Kuhlman to X, writing, "Even Obama's doctor admits the truth. This is precisely why Chairman @RepJamesComer subpoenaed Dr. Kevin O'Connor, Biden's physician. This is a scandal of historical proportions, and we will investigate it thoroughly!" In a letter to O'Connor, Comer said the transcribed interview would focus on the physician's February 2024 assessment that Biden was "a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency." "Among other subjects, the Committee expressed its interest in whether your financial relationship with the Biden family affected your assessment of former President Biden's physical and mental fitness to fulfill his duties as President," Comer wrote. Questions about Biden's cognitive state stretch extend solely past Republicans. CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios' Alex Thompson recently published a book titled "Original Sin," which details concerns and debates inside the White House and Democratic Party over Biden's mental state and age. In the book, Tapper and Thompson wrote, "Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board." Naomi Biden, the former president's granddaughter, dismissed the book as "political fairy smut for the permanent, professional chattering class." Comer requested transcribed interviews with Biden's White House senior advisers Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn, former White House chief of staff Ron Klain, former deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed and Steve Ricchetti, a former counselor to the president. He also called for former senior White House aides Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, Ashley Williams and Neera Tanden to appear before the committee and suggested subpoenas could be forthcoming if they did not schedule voluntary interviews.
