Health and Human Rights News
Week ending 18 April 2025
Health services disrupted globally
The World Health Organization is warning health service disruptions are occurring in 70% of its surveyed countries as a result of the sudden suspension or reduction in foreign aid. It says the cuts will result in greater out-of-pocket expenses for patients, hitting the poor and most vulnerable hardest. High levels of disruptions are reported in outbreak detection and response, malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, sexually transmitted infections, family planning, and maternal and child health services.
See also:
Enforceable Commitments to Global Health Needed to Fulfill Rights, Moses Mulumba et al, Viewpoint, March 2025
UN Experts: Act to help Sudan
Tlaleng Mofokeng, the Special Rapporteur on the right to health, along with other UN Experts and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, urged the international community to respond to the crisis in Sudan and support humanitarian aid efforts. The conflict is now in its third year and famine, displacement, attacks on civilian infrastructure, and widespread violence are taking “a horrifying toll”. The UN reports that cuts to international aid are worsening and as ‘24.6 million people – about half the population – are experiencing acute food insecurity, with 638,000 facing catastrophic hunger, a record high.’ Turk observed, “With people’s rights to food, water, health, housing and education massively curtailed, the brutal conflict in Sudan is not only laying waste to today’s Sudan, but also practically decimating Sudan’s future.”
Gaza faces starvation, humanitarian crisis
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is warning the Gaza Strip is facing the worst humanitarian crisis in the 18 months since the war began because of Israel’s blockade that has stopped the entry of all food and other goods for more than six weeks. Thousands of children have become malnourished, and most people are barely eating one meal a day as stocks dwindle.
Harvard sticks to its principles…
In the latest attempt to coerce Harvard University into accepting the Trump administration’s terms in return for the release of $9 billion in federal funds, Trump has instructed Internal Revenue Service to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status. Harvard responded to the demands stating, “The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government. Accordingly, Harvard will not accept the government’s terms as an agreement in principle.” In a letter to the Harvard community, the President of Harvard University, Alan Garber, said the demands being made by the federal government to control the Harvard community were unprecedented: “They include requirements to “audit” the viewpoints of our student body, faculty, staff, and to “reduc[e] the power” of certain students, faculty, and administrators targeted because of their ideological views.”
…Scientific journals also targeted
At least three academic journals, including CHEST, published by the American College of Chest Physicians, have received letters from Edward R. Martin Jr., US Attorney for the District of Columbia, with a list of questions as to how the journal handles bias, misinformation, and competing viewpoints. The letter requested a response by 2 May, including to the questions as to how they “clearly articulate[s] to the public when you have certain viewpoints that are influenced by your ongoing relations with supporters, funders, advertisers, and others” and “whether the journal accepts manuscripts from “competing viewpoints” as well as how it assesses the role of “funding organizations like the National Institutes of Health in the development of submitted articles.” Quoted by MedPage, JT Morris, senior attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, noted the law is clear: “A publication’s editorial decisions are none of the government’s business, whether it’s a newspaper or a medical journal.”
US Green groups sue over climate data removal
Green groups have sued the Trump administration over the removal of government webpages containing federal climate and environmental justice data. The websites tracked shifts in the climate, pollution, and extreme weather impacts on low-income communities, and infrastructure that is extremely vulnerable to climate disasters. “The public has a right to access these taxpayer-funded datasets… Removing government datasets is tantamount to theft,” said Gretchen Goldman, president of the science advocacy non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists, which is a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Judges says EPA and climate funds must be paid
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the US Environmental Protection Agency from terminating at least $14 billion in climate grants approved under President Joe Biden. The preliminary injunction prohibits the EPA from “unlawfully suspending or terminating” the grant awards and ordered Citibank, which was tasked with disbursing the funds, to release the money to the grant recipients. The decision deals yet another setback to the Trump administration’s efforts to freeze climate spending across the government. Another federal judge ruled on the same day that agencies must release billions in additional climate funding that had been paused since Inauguration Day.
Extent of proposed health cuts revealed
The US Department of Health and Human Services is being asked to absorb a $40 billion cut, about one-third of its discretionary budget, according to a preliminary budget document obtained by the Washington Post. The document calls not only for cuts, but a major restructuring of health and human service agencies which are expected to make it difficult to document health and health care inequities and will eliminate the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities.
See also:
Trump’s banned words and disastrous health policies, Joseph J. Amon 4 February 2025
NIH Science Review Boards keep white males
Thirty-eight of 43 experts cut from the boards that review science and research at the National Institutes of Health are female, Black or Hispanic, according to an analysis by the chairs of a dozen of the boards and reported in the Washington Post. The scientists, about a fifth of the total board members, were not given a reason for their dismissal. Six percent of White males who serve on boards were fired, compared with half of Black and Hispanic females and a quarter of all females, according to the analysis. Of 36 Black and Hispanic board members, close to 40 percent were fired, compared with 16 percent of White board members.
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