Trump cuts to advisory groups leaves hospitals without key expertise on disease
Under the Trump administration, dozens of advisory committees have been ended or frozen, including one on controlling infection in healthcare settings.
Transcript
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
We’ve been taking stock recently of science that has not been done under President Trump. Federal advisory groups help guide the government on research and science issues. Since Trump took office, dozens of those groups have been canceled or frozen. Among them is one dedicated to preventing infection in healthcare settings. NPR’s Katia Riddle reports.
KATIA RIDDLE, BYLINE: Drug-resistant organisms are a vexing problem for infectious disease experts. For years, doctors have been waging war on dangerous bacteria like MRSA. But in the last decade, a new villain appeared on the scene – a fungus called Candida auris.
SCOTT ROBERTS: It was first identified in the ear canal of a nursing-home patient in Japan in 2009. And it really wasn’t around before that.
RIDDLE: Scott Roberts is an infectious disease doctor at Yale. He treated one of the first patients in the U.S. with this fungus.
