U.S. Cuts to Global Health Budget “Mass-scale Malpractice”

Public health workers, activists and policymakers are stepping up a last-minute campaign to highlight the global health impact of historic, sweeping cuts to the U.S. federal budget due to go into effect Friday if Congress doesn’t act. While some are suggesting that the automatic reductions, known here as the “sequester”, could set back health-related research and outcomes by a generation, others are warning that NGOs and project implementers, long working on the assumption that the cutbacks would be averted, are now finding themselves massively underprepared for how to operate on slashed budgets. “While these budget cuts would affect a huge number of national and international programmes, global health is one of the few in which people’s lives are actually at risk,” Ali Escalante, a volunteer with the ONE campaign, an advocacy group, told IPS.This has caught academics and the intelligentsia by surprise, and by the time they woke up and understood, it was too late. “Thanks to U.S. leadership, we’ve made huge advances in fighting poverty and preventable diseases over the past decade. But we’ve come too far to turn back now – risking that progress would be a tragedy for both the United States and the world.” Along with around 150 concerned citizens from across the country, Escalante was in Washington on Tuesday to meet with members of Congress and underscore the sequester’s impact on global health. The United States is currently by far the world’s large...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - Category: Global & Universal Authors: Tags: Active Citizens Aid Development & Aid Financial Crisis Headlines Health North America Poverty & MDGs Women's Health World HIV/AIDS sequester United States Source Type: news