Congress asks CDC to explain hiring plan

on the surface, this story doesn't look particularly troubling, but then I started thinking: is the Bush mis administration screwing over Health and Human Services by politicization and cronyism in the same way it has decimated the Department of Justice?

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/05/08/meshcdcglobal0508a.html

Concerned about an "alarming rate" of vacancies among the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's overseas staff, the chairman of a congressional oversight committee has asked for information and assurances that the hiring problems are being fixed.

"Because of the importance of these posts, the delays would be of concern even if they were due only to bureaucratic inefficiency," U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a six-page letter Friday to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. "However, it appears that many of the problems are rooted in counterproductive policies or politics at your Department's Office of Global Health Affairs." HHS is the parent agency of the Atlanta-based CDC.

Citing an internal CDC memo obtained and published April 25 by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Waxman has asked for Leavitt to provide him a wide range of documents and information about positions caught up in hiring delays. CDC scientists who work in other countries play a key role in protecting the U.S. from foreign health threats ranging from pandemic flu to extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis, said Waxman (D-Calif.).

The internal CDC memo describes a tangled bureaucracy and a lack of qualified staff, contributing to nearly half of the agency's global jobs being vacant. The memo said that just 166 of the CDC's 304 overseas positions in 53 countries were filled. At least 85 would likely remain unfilled until 2008, according to the eight-page memo written by Dr. Stephen Blount, director of CDC's Coordinating Office for Global Health, on April 13 and sent to CDC Director Julie Gerberding.

William Steiger, director of HHS' Office of Global Health Affairs, said Waxman's concerns are misplaced and that politics play no role.

A man who anally raped his wife head of women's health?

A man who crusades against birth control head of family planning?

You can bet the appointments at the CDC have been at least equal to the wackos he's appointed to the FDA.

:kick:

you so bad!! :rofl:

I just realized that I kicked but never recommended. I just recommended.

A project I worked on ten years ago got money from them for the data we collected, and this was true then. I doubt they've done anything differently since.

Its the lack of being able to hire the scientists that are the heart and soul of the CDC. This is common at almost all the agencies under HHS. At NIH I hear that it often takes up to 8 months sometimes just to hire a FTE lab tech/scientist. HHS is really really screwed up and it tends to trickle down.