By Ahmed Aboulenein
WASHINGTON, Aug 5 (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Wednesday confirmed Dr. Erica Schwartz as director of the U.S. CDC, handing the Trump administration a rare win after repeated failed attempts to fill top health posts.
Schwartz, U.S. President Donald Trump’s third pick to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was confirmed 51-44. She will be the first permanent CDC director since Susan Monarez, Trump’s second pick, was fired by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last year after less than a month over a clash on vaccine policy.
Her confirmation follows months of leadership turmoil at the CDC, which has lacked a permanent leader for all but a month of Trump’s second term.
Schwartz inherits an agency confronting the worst U.S. measles resurgence in three decades, driven by falling childhood immunization rates, an international Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, and the largest U.S. foodborne illness outbreak in recent years.
Trump nominated Schwartz, his first-term deputy surgeon general, in April. The 54-year-old is a board-certified preventive medicine physician who served as the U.S. Coast Guard’s chief medical officer from 2015 to 2019. She holds a medical degree from Brown University and a law degree from the University of Maryland.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Mark Porter and Nick Zieminski)
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