Sec. Tingtang Wallawalla-Bingbang Didn't Mention Warming In "MAHA" Plan, Erased Tropical Disease Program

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Next year should have been a year of celebration for experts dedicated to ridding the world of disabling and deadly infectious diseases. It would have been the 20th anniversary of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Neglected Tropical Diseases Program, which has helped billions around the world recover from debilitating infections like hookworm, dengue fever and Chagas’ disease. Instead, the Trump administration eliminated the program in May. The move came after President Trump withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization on his first day in office, and later canceled more than $530 million in grants for infectious disease research. Then in August, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. terminated nearly $500 million in grants to develop vaccines using messenger RNA, or mRNA, technology.

The Trump administration justified eliminating USAID neglected tropical disease (NTD) funding claiming that such programs “do not make Americans safer.” Yet many of these diseases already affect millions of Americans. Others are just a plane ride away. The loss of U.S. funding for neglected tropical diseases, which followed the United Kingdom’s withdrawal of financing after Brexit, “will likely collapse global NTD control and elimination efforts,” infectious disease experts warned in Microbes and Infection in July.

“The same science and infrastructure that develops tools for global threats also strengthens U.S. preparedness,” said Kristie Mikus, executive director of the Global Health Technologies Coalition, which advances technologies for infectious diseases and poverty-related neglected tropical diseases.

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Yet the Make America Healthy Again report made no mention of climate change, even though the EPA warned in 2023 that climate-related stressors like extreme heat experienced during childhood can cause chronic disease and, as researchers found in a 2022 New England Journal of Medicine article, “nearly every child around the world is considered to be at risk from at least one climate hazard.” The MAHA report also ignored neglected tropical diseases, even though they disproportionately affect children, causing cognitive decline and disability.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12092025/rfk-jr-neglected-tropical-diseases/