The layoffs of the Federal World Trade Center health program caused a “chaos”, leaving the city members and agencies who do not know who contact when the city employees are confronted with delays in living care, according to officials, initiates and defenders.
The program, which started a decade after the September 11 terrorist attack, provides medical services to affected individuals and studies on diseases linked to 9/11. He serves more than 83,000 New Yorkers and has generally collected the support of republican members of the New York Region Congress.
But earlier this month, President Donald Trump approved dismissals at the Ministry of Health and Social Services, including doctors and long-standing director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Niosh), Dr John Howard, who helped create the World Trade Center health program.
Howard would have been brought back After an outcry, but the other layoffs remain. And now, the people of the city who deal with the WTC survivors’ program say they have lost key contact points – and faith in its future.
But despite the threats against city workers, mayor Eric Adams, a retired police officer who also answered Ground Zero, refused to answer repeated questions of the city earlier this month on the program cuts. New York has the largest part of the country of responders and survivors of September 11 registered on the program.
Lawyer Michael Barasch represents thousands of people across the country registered in the September 11 health program. He is also in it: his office is on Park Place, a few pâtés from Ground Zero houses, and he lost two employees because of cancer and survived the prostate cancer himself.
“This is total chaos,” he said, customers calling for not knowing how to access program services. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Barasch told the city that a man recently called him by asking, “Will the government continue to pay for my chemo?”
People on the program are eligible for free annual examinations, which often leads to early detection of cancers and other diseases, he noted.
“They turn them early and early detection saves lives,” said Barasch. The program also finances research subsidies on other potential diseases or effects linked to 9/11.
“If Niosh is eviscerated, who will finish studies?”, He said.
John Feal, a zero terrain demolition supervisor that founded the Fealgood Foundation to put pressure on more funding for the survivors of September 11 and the first stakeholders, criticized Adams for not having done more for city workers and residents – especially as a former cop who responded after the attacks.
“I want a mayor who will worry about humanity, who has empathy and who has compassion,” he said in an interview Earlier this month on the Pix 11.
“He is a man who cares about himself, saving his own buttocks. He concluded an agreement with this administration (Trump), so we know where his mind is and above all I know where his heart is and it is not with the community of September 11.”
City agencies in darkness
The upheaval of the federal agency also affected municipal agencies, which have lost contacts and await approvals for medical treatment, according to a spokesperson for the mayor’s office who did not want his name to be published.
The direct contacts of the Ministry of Health and Mental Hygiene on the program were dismissed, without any information on what will then happen.
In FDNY, active and retired firefighters who need rescue procedures, including chemotherapy and a pulmonary transplant, are in limbo, with high-ups not there to approve them, according to the mayor’s office. And even the approval of staff protection equipment – including the respirators – take place through the now cut federal agency, without any idea of whom it will manage it.
After Adams dodged several questions about the program, a spokesman sent a statement last week, avoiding direct criticism from the Trump administration.
“New York City is dedicated to providing quality health care to the heroes who responded on September 11 and the survivors of the most tragic day in America’s history,” the mayor said in a statement.
“Our partnership with the federal government to provide these services is essential, providing access to rescue treatments and sensitive to time for each firefighter, police, volunteer and daily that remembers that day, and remember what it took to rebuild the next morning. We hold hands to the federal government about the restoration of these important resources. ”
A CDC spokesperson Brittney Manchester said in a statement that the programs were continuing but had not responded to layoffs or concerns about lost contacts.
“Direct patient care operates and program members are seen by doctors and nurses in clinics,” she wrote.
“All the programs required to rule on it will remain intact and, following the reorganization, will be better placed to execute the legal intention of the congress.”
New discounts of the September 11 survivor program could also leave the city on the hook to pay for medical care, notes the defenders.
There are more than 137,000 stakeholders and survivors who live across the country, and more than 46,000 of them asked for treatment last year through the World Trade Center Health Program, according to Citizens for the extension of the James Zadroga ACT, a defense group.
New York State holds the largest share of people on the program, with 83,719 last June, according to data.
New York City pays 10% From the health care care program and the victims’ compensation fund – which has accumulated more than $ 15 billion since the start of the program. But with more than 10,600 members registered in the union, many of whom have their usual health insurance paid by the city, additional reductions in the federal program could leave the city responsible for subsequent health costs.
Ben Chevat, Executive Director of Independent Health Watch of September 11, told the city that most of the problems distributed by staff cuts are not yet fully known – but will likely become worse.
“The list of problems that these staff discounts have caused,” he said. “The certification of the conditions of the responders and the survivors allowing his care ceased. New inscriptions for those looking for care has stopped.