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With the H5N1 virus now in 55 countries, the CDC desperately needs to have boots on the ground in places like South East Asia, and yet the Federal bureaucracy is getting in the way of the CDC's mission.
This editorial from the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
Jobs hurdle creates crisis for CDC
Published on: 05/02/07Despite still very-real threats like pandemic flu and bioterrorism, the federal government's hiring bureaucracy is jeopardizing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's ability to respond quickly to a public health crisis in other parts of the world.
For months now, the Atlanta-based agency has been unable to fill nearly half of its overseas assignments, despite an urgent need to get scientists on the ground to help deal with avian flu, HIV/AIDS and other dangers. To be sure, some of the vacancies result from an overall shortage of qualified staff, a problem that plagues all of medicine. But the inability to fill many of the assignments also stems from a federal bureaucracy that is not designed to respond quickly to public health threats outside the United States.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Alison Young reported last week that only 166 of the agency's 304 positions in overseas assignments are now filled. Of those still vacant, at least 85 are expected to remain unfilled through the remainder of the year because of delays in the hiring process. Several of those key unfilled positions are in China and Indonesia, a hotbed of activity for H5NI avian influenza, the virus that scientists fear may mutate and spark a pandemic.
When the Bush administration took office six years ago, it began to consolidate hiring and employment practices in a way that has left the CDC too little direct control over how fast it can fill vacancies. Job applicants have to be cleared through a centralized Department of Health and Human Services hiring center in Atlanta, which can take weeks or months to do. The agency now has 800 vacancies within its 9,000-position workforce.
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