(Washington) The fate of the director of the main health agency in the United States, recently entered into office, sowed confusion on Wednesday, concerned denying her departure announced earlier by the Donald Trump health department.
Susan Monarez, in office for less than a month at the head of the centers for the control and prevention of diseases (CDC) “has neither resigned nor received from the White House notification indicating that she was dismissed,” said his lawyers Me Zaid and Me Lowell in a press release sent to AFP.
“As a person honest and devoted to science, they will not resign,” they added, accusing the health secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., challenged for his antivaccini positions, “to instrumentalize public health for political purposes”.
Still according to them, the secretary would have tried to rule out Mme Monarrez after she “refused to validate non -scientific and dangerous directives and to dismiss experts”.
A few hours earlier, the Secretary of Health had announced that Mme Monarerez “was no longer director” of CDC in a short message on X. “We thank her for her dedicated service to the American people,” he added.
The news, reported at first by the Washington Postoccurs in full overhaul of American vaccine policy, on the impetus of RFK Jr.
“Too much is too much,” reacted a senior CDC official, Demeter Daskalakis, on X. In a long message, the latter announced to resign, denouncing the pressures of the new American administration to “generate policies and documents not reflecting scientific reality”.
According to American media, other senior agency officials have done the same.
Since his entry into office, Robert Kennedy Jr. has started a deep overhaul of American health agencies and the country’s vaccination policy, dismissing renowned experts, restricting access to COVVI-19 vaccines or cutting funds to the development of new vaccines.
Measures often taken against scientific consensus and castigated by external experts.
Susan Monarez had been confirmed at the end of July by the American Senate at the head of the centers for the control and prevention of diseases (CDC), one of the health agencies that the Department of Health oversees.
His appointment was actually a second choice, the White House had to give up in March his first candidate, David Weldon, an ex-elected and doctor known for his vaccinosceptic positions, for fear that he does not miss the voices necessary for the congress.
The hasty departure of mme Monarez occurs in the middle of the CDC crisis, the agency having been the target in early August of an armed attack by a man strongly opposed to the vaccine against the COVVI-19.
Hundreds of employees and former employees of health agencies had signed an open letter in the process accusing RFK Jr. of endangering them by propagating false information, especially on vaccines.
