WASHINGTON — The government shutdown has slowed or halted federal efforts to protect Americans’ health and safety, from probes into the cause of transportation and workplace accidents to tracking foodborne illness. The latest example: An outbreak of salmonella in chicken that has sickened people in 18 states.
The federal Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention said yesterday (Oct 8) that it was recalling some of its furloughed staff to deal with the outbreak, which has sickened more than 270 people. Before then, the CDC had only a handful of scientists working on outbreak detection, severely hampering its ability to track potentially deadly illnesses.
With federal workers on leave, the states have had to pick up much of the slack.
In the case of food safety, state labs are investigating foodborne illnesses and communicating with each other — without the help of federal authorities, in many cases — to figure out whether outbreaks have spread.
Dr Christopher Braden, head of the CDC division that investigates foodborne illness, said the agency will be able to better monitor the salmonella outbreak with the recalled federal staff. But the agency is monitoring more than 30 outbreaks, and gaps still exist as the federal bureaucracy limps through a shutdown beginning its second week.
With staff furloughed last week, the CDC stopped monitoring for some foodborne pathogens, including shigella and campylobacter. The agency is now watching for those again, but Dr Braden said some investigations are still on the back burner, including an ongoing outbreak of salmonella from handling live poultry that has sickened more than 300.
CDC isn’t the only agency protecting health and safety that’s strained. The shutdown has forced the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to halt its regular mine safety inspections, which it normally conducts at each of the nation’s underground mines every three months.
The lack of inspections is coming under scrutiny after three mine workers died in separate accidents on three consecutive days during the past week. The coal mining industry has not had three consecutive days of fatal accidents in more than a decade. MSHA has said it’s premature to draw any conclusions about the link between the shutdown and the accidents, but the nation’s largest mine workers union has raised alarms.
Federal occupational safety and health inspectors also have stopped most workplace checks, and the National Transportation Safety Board is only investigating accidents if officials believe lives or property are in danger.
The Food and Drug Administration also has stopped routine inspections of food facilities in the United States and abroad, and border controls could be delayed. Food imports are still being inspected at borders, but any samples that need to be analysed could be stalled because there are fewer scientists to analyse them.
The CDC also has had to halt its surveillance of flu, an infectious disease that kills about 24,000 Americans in an average year.
This early in the flu season there is little illness, meaning little to test yet. But to fill in the gap, some state health departments have been receiving and testing samples that otherwise would have gone to CDC, said Ms Kelly Wroblewski of the Association of Public Health Laboratories.
CDC also is slashing its staffing on quarantine stations at 20 airports and entry points. When airline pilots or customs workers become aware of a sick traveler, they flag quarantine officers who can detain, examine and isolate those who might be an infectious threat to the US public.
During the shutdown, quarantine station staff has been cut by 80 per cent, meaning there’s essentially only one person working at each station, said Dr Martin Cetron, who leads CDC’s division of global migration and quarantine. The lack of staff could heighten the possibility that some diseases could slip into the country at a time when measles is raging in Turkey and cholera is breaking out in Mexico.
Still, many federal workers who protect safety and health are still working, from air traffic controllers to airport screeners to the majority of federal law enforcement. Active duty military personnel are on duty. USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service, the agency responsible for investigating the poultry farm in California that is linked to the salmonella outbreak, is also mostly staffed.
But the absence of so-called nonessential workers who are furloughed can have a dangerous ripple effect, said Ms Caroline Smith De Waal, director of food safety advocacy at the Washington-based Centre for Science in the Public Interest.
She noted that the CDC website has limited information and the USDA website is shut down, preventing concerned members of the public from finding out more information on the salmonella outbreak and other food-borne illnesses. The agencies aren’t tweeting or disseminating health safety information except for a few releases to the media.
From my point of view from the above news. They are obviously doing their best effort just to save their hometown from being shutdown. If the government had given them a chance to change for the better , thereby they don’t have to go through some difficult situation such as shutting down company, fire staff, ETC;..i believe that if they do some little changes such like take care of things and environment issue. Like re-do where the mistake happens. Such like clear up unwanted items or things. Things like this if wanted to avoid disappointment they really need to start from now, OR they might just regret later in near future where they will loose those dear to them. So if i were in their shoes, i would make a biggest change even how little items or things might be. As i know that health is important to almost everybody across the globe. But if we just ignored important issue..things like this will just happen over and over again. Each every year people die of some cancer and illness related. And almost 99% of most people all send to the hospital, whether from work , school , public or even at home. As you can see our Earth , has a biggest problem in “Global Warming” issue, where there is some changes around us where the disaster happen such like “Tsunami , Tornado , Earthquakes , Country/Places Collapse..ETC;” and if the government around the world didn’t start any new ideas such like creating new things into this Earth, disaster wouldn’t start or happen too fast. What they need to keep in mind is that, they need to decressed what they trying to create and more nature if possible. World Peace People! That would be all for today! Thank you for reading!
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