PVV Minister Agema opens the doors to a new epidemic of cuts – Joop – BNNVARA

PVV Health Minister Fleur Agema and Xenophobic Tweets are putting a knife to plans that should make the Netherlands more resilient in the event of a new pandemic. These plans were designed by his predecessor Ernst Kuipers so that they would not always lag behind the facts, as with the corona pandemic, leading to social unrest and many people sick and dead. These plans are now being cut back significantly under Agema.

The plan was to invest several million euros in medical preparations in the coming years. In this way, the Netherlands should have an advantage in fighting new disease outbreaks. De Volkskrant writes:

It meant investing in strengthening the regional health services (GGDs), which played an important role in the control of infectious diseases during the corona crisis. Additional funds were also provided to train medical personnel so that they can be used more quickly and flexibly in emergencies, and to provide more medical products, such as medicines, vaccines and protective equipment.

The cuts that Agema is now implementing amount to around 300 million euros. As a result, the expansion of the staff of the GGDs cannot continue, and they cannot investigate better mapping events and the increase of intensive care units.

Agema announced all this in a letter to the House of Representatives. It was previously known that the new cabinet would make major cuts in health care and both the House and the Dutch Safety Board (OVV) wanted to know from the minister what this would look like in practice. Agema admits in her letter to Parliament that the cuts ‘obviously affect the prevention and control of infectious diseases’ and that they have ‘wider implications for basic emergency care’.

GGD-GHOR President André Rouvoet already saw the cuts coming and called their consequences dire.

According to Rouvoet, the control of infectious diseases is already insufficient and the additional capacity that the GGDs have had from corona must be reduced due to cuts. As a result, a lot of ‘knowledge and experience’ would be lost. “Cutting back on pandemic preparedness is like tearing down the dikes as the storm approaches. “