The Trump administration has gutted the company overseeing the World Commerce Middle Well being Program, a transfer advocates say will wreak havoc on this system’s operations and convey essential operations to a standstill.
Tens of hundreds of responders and survivors depend on the WTC Well being Program to get remedy and drugs and monitor accidents and diseases attributable to the toxins that swirled round Floor Zero throughout on 9/11 and the weeks that adopted.
Trump Well being and Human Providers Secretary RFK Jr. has launched the gutting technique of shedding round two-thirds of the workers on the Nationwide Institute of Occupational Security and Well being, or NIOSH, a federal well being company.
The World Commerce Middle Well being Program is housed beneath NIOSH, which in flip is a part of the Facilities for Illness Management. Round 873 positions are to be culled — together with that of Dr. John Howard, the top of NIOSH and the administrator of the 9/11 first responders well being remedy and monitoring program.
No different WTC Well being Program workers have been fired however this system depends on medical doctors, epidemiologists, and administrative staffers who work for the broader company, so the NIOSH firings pose a risk, survivor advocates declare. Key duties equivalent to evaluating new functions to this system are finished by NIOSH medical doctors.
“These cuts to NIOSH will be devastating to the World Trade Center Health Program and must be stopped. The first step must be restoring Dr. Howard as NIOSH Director immediately,” Benjamin Chevat, govt director of Residents for the Extension of the James Zadroga Act, mentioned in a press release, calling the transfer “another example of chainsaw incompetence.”
John Feal, a longtime 9/11 survivor advocate who lead a group to Washington D.C. to get the James Zadroga Act — which created the WTC Well being Program — handed, referred to as the slicing of NIOSH and Dr. Howard’s firing “the most reckless, careless, unconscionable, disgusting, and vile act against those in the 9/11 community that has been committed since Sept. 11, 2001.”
“Welcome to being part of the atrocity because you have bellied up to the bar for a drink with those who caused that fateful day,” mentioned Feal. “You have damaged thousands of people in an instant with your actions today, you have caused irreparable PTSD with your actions today and you have torn thousands of families apart with your actions today.
“You have spit in the faces of the 9/11 Community for the last time,” he mentioned.
It’s now unclear how this system might be run and who, if not NIOSH staffers, will deal with contracts, communications, HR, grants, and different important operations
This all comes even if drastic cuts to the 9/11 program had been reversed earlier this yr after Republican lawmakers sounded the alarm. The uncommon reversal from Trump in February noticed him restore two analysis grants and the roles of 16 workers.
“After cutting this program’s staff directly a few weeks ago and having to rescind those cuts under pressure we would have thought that the Trump Administration or the new HHS Secretary, Robert Kennedy Jr. would have learned their lesson and would have thought before cutting, but that, sadly, was not the case,” Chevat mentioned.
This system was additionally threatened beneath the final Trump administration. In 2018, the admin proposed reshuffling the company to place it beneath the purview of simply the CDC.
It’s estimated that over 400,000 individuals had been affected by the toxins swirling over Floor Zero. Greater than 127,000 individuals have been enrolled within the WTC Well being Program.
Out of that quantity greater than 81,000 have an authorized 9/11 sickness from their publicity throughout and after the fear assaults on the World Commerce Middle, in addition to the hijacked airplane crashes in Shanksville, Pa., and on the Pentagon, in accordance with this system’s web site.
Initially Printed: April 2, 2025 at 9:35 AM EDT
