Steep federal funding cuts have forced public health officials in one of Texas’ most populous counties — Dallas — to cancel dozens of vaccination clinics and lay off 21 workers on the front lines of combatting the state’s growing measles outbreak.
“I just had to tell our commissioners this morning that we’ve had to cancel over 50 different clinics in our community,” said Dr. Philip Huang, director and health authority for the Dallas County Health and Human Services Department. Many of the clinics had been planned for schools in areas with low vaccination rates, he said.
The vaccines, which included measles, mumps and rubella shots, were meant to be given free to families.
The money being cut — $11.4 billion nationwide — was originally allocated to aid community health departments during the pandemic. Local public health officials have more recently been using the Covid funds for other public health initiatives, such as measles prevention, surveillance and testing.
Last week however, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would “no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”
“That’s very short-sighted and not understanding of the way public health works,” Huang said. “Being prepared for Covid helps build our capacity to be able to respond to other issues.”
Huang said his team was still assessing the exact amount of money slashed in his budget, but estimated it to be in the millions.
As of Tuesday, 422 measles had been reported by the Texas Department of State Health Services. None are in Dallas County, but Huang said the cuts would leave his community vulnerable to cases.
Eleven full-time and 10 part-time staffers were let go, he said. The majority were health care providers giving vaccines, epidemiologists and lab staff involved with measles surveillance and prevention.
Staff operating vaccine clinics in West Texas, which remains the epicenter of the measles outbreak, said those clinics are continuing as planned for now.
Other states reporting measles outbreaks include Kansas with 23 cases, Oklahoma with 10 cases, and New Mexico with 48 cases. And public health officials in Ohio have identified at least a dozen cases.
