In 2006 and 2007, DHEC told lawmakers that lower federal funding was “causing instability in the department’s preparedness efforts.”
In 2008, it cautioned that “sustenance of state emergency preparedness, for pandemics and other disasters, is becoming a critical issue.”
That year and again in 2009, it reported that it had cut staff because the state hadn’t stepped in to fill federal cuts. Funding shortages had “jeopardized preparedness efforts,” it said.
Seven years in a row, it asked the Legislature for money to keep preparing. That money did not come. Year after year, the agency reminded lawmakers that its emergency planning depended on federal money alone.
Without new funding, “the ability to respond to a large-scale infectious disease event would be severely limited,” DHEC wrote in 2012.
But by then, it was facing an even bigger challenge: The money it got from the state for public health work was dwindling, too.
South Carolina’s public health system has become one of the most depleted in the nation, hampering the state’s capacity to manage the coronavirus outbreak and recovery.https://t.co/cdR9Fz9nXK
— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) April 19, 2020