How Trump’s healthcare picks could impact global health

0
How Trump’s healthcare picks could impact global health

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees for the country’s top health agencies and his previous track record in office have sparked concerns globally about a potential rise in “anti-science” views and the defunding of global public health efforts.

For example, during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration severed US ties with the World Health Organization (WHO). Even though President Joe Biden restored the relationship, the subsequent struggle to get US-made vaccines in lower-income countries allowed countries like Russia and China to play greater-than-expected roles in the global pandemic response.

Trump also previously defunded or threatened to defund programs that didn’t align with his agenda on reproductive rights, known as the global gag rule. This is why Trump’s new round of nominees and their potential global reach is concerning global public health experts.

US health agencies, along with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), are still the gold standard for drug approval and disease-fighting strategies. However, that could diminish, several experts told Yahoo Finance.

“It already happens that the FDA [Food and Drug Administration], EMA, and MHRA make a few different decisions,” said Martin McKee, a professor of European public health at London’s School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “However, the FDA decisions are adopted by many countries without their own regulatory bodies, so I assume that they will look to EMA instead — but it’s all very uncertain.”

Trump nominated Marty Makary, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and chief medical officer of telehealth platform Sesame, to lead the FDA. Makary is viewed as a potentially uncontroversial pick by experts, which could help allay concerns. But some experts say the top health agency nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is the greater concern.

Robert Kennedy Jr. speaks with members of the press at Trump Tower in New York City, U.S., January 10, 2017. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith
How much damage? Robert Kennedy Jr. speaks with members of the press at Trump Tower in New York City, on Jan. 10, 2017. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith · REUTERS / Reuters

Angie Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, said many of Trump’s nominees are aligned on some topics and have some level of skepticism toward science.

“It’s going to bring down the standing of the US no matter what, to put anti-vaxxers in charge of public health agencies,” she said.

She added, “The extent of the damage will depend on how effective [the nominees] are at implementing some of their promised changes,” Rasmussen noted it is hard to predict the time frame of any changes.


link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *