Several committee members of the CDC’s Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee have received termination notices, MedPage Today reported April 29.
1. HICPAC develops guidance for preventing and controlling healthcare-associated infections.
2. Of the 11 voting members of the committee, a handful told MedPage they had received termination notices. HICPAC’s main page on the CDC website has also been removed, and a meeting that was supposed to take place March 6-7 was canceled last minute and has not been rescheduled. The combination of these events have caused public health experts to speculate that the CDC might be shutting the committee down.
3. That said, there has been no official notice from CDC or HHS that HICPAC has been terminated. Sources told MedPage that the CDC is supposed to schedule a call to provide an update on the committee’s status, but that has not yet been arranged.
4. The current situation has many experts worried about the future of patient safety.
Dismantling HICPAC would lead to “more patients having healthcare-associated infections,” Carol McLay, DrPH, RN, president of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, told MedPage. “It’s just part of systemic dismantling of public health infrastructure we’ve been seeing over the past 100 days.”
5. In recent years, HICPAC has been under scrutiny for its recommendation that surgical masks provide adequate protection against airborne pathogens, rather than recommending N95 masks. The committee’s final version of the guidance, along with other recommendations, could be at risk if it is dissolved.
