Sacramento County health officials are bracing for more than a swine flu outbreak as the Board of Supervisors holds hearings this week to discuss further budget cuts.
The Public Health Department stands to lose $750,000 more in general fund money for the year. That means the public health budget would drop from about $47.4 million at the start of last fiscal year to $40 million after the latest round of cuts, said Glennah Trochet, the county's public health officer.
"We're in survival mode," Trochet said, predicting: "There are some diseases we won't investigate at all or will have to investigate retroactively. ... We will be regretful we weren't able to act more quickly."
Drops in property tax, sales tax and state revenue, combined with the board's decision to shift more money to the Sheriff's Department, means the county needs to cut an additional $54.5 million from this year's budget.
Possible cuts to public health include:
• Three people who work on communicable diseases and the control of sexually transmitted diseases, including an epidemiologist
• Two microbiologists from the public health lab
• Reduced hours for public health staff
• Reduction or elimination of contracts with community-based organizations testing high-risk populations for HIV
• Reduction or elimination of programs that help prevent child mortality
One-time federal funds for H1N1 – also known as swine flu – may allow the department to temporarily keep several positions, but the department has lost considerable resources in the past two years, officials said.
If the cuts go through as proposed, field nursing staff will have dropped from 54 positions in fiscal year 2007-08 to 29 this year; bioterrorism preparedness will be down to nine from 14; and childhood disability prevention programs will have lost almost eight positions leaving 24, according to figures the department provided.
The public health officials say the department provides critical services such as containing the spread of disease, testing for gonorrhea and HIV, preparing and handling bioterrorism incidents, providing field nurses and more.
The public health lab processes most tuberculosis swabs and tests for rabies and other communicable diseases, said Anthony Gonzalez, the lab's director.
The lab already lost two support staff and a lab technician in June.
Why should the average Joe care?
"I think that Joe should be aware the way a public health system manages infectious disease is by information and data collection. And that starts in the lab," Gonzalez said. "A lot of Joe's safety and health starts with specimens coming in here."
More cuts could slow turnaround time in the nearly 80,000 specimens processed annually, he said.
Reduced hours for staff who work on communicable and sexually transmitted diseases could mean "400 incidents will be delayed in being considered or will not be acted upon," which in turn could result in the spread of disease, according to public health documents.
Despite board hearings on the proposed cuts, no one seems optimistic alternatives will be found.
"It's going to be tough to mitigate cuts to anything," said Supervisor Roberta MacGlashan.
The county could appropriate more money for public health if swine flu sweeps the region, but the money has to come from somewhere else, she said.
"I'm hesitant to throw more money at that and have it turn out not to be that severe."
Source Sac Bee
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