NEW YORK — The staff running the federal World Trade Center Health Program has been cut by 25% as the number of sick 9/11 survivors the group treats is expected to increase by 10,000 this year, the Daily News has learned.

Survivor advocates are demanding U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lift the agency’s hiring freeze and fully staff the program before the personnel shortfall adversely affects first responders and survivors seeking help.

“Over the last 11 months, since you took over as secretary of Health and Human Services, you have ignored the program staffing needs, resulting in disrupting key WTC Health Program operations,” Benjamin Chevat, executive director of 9/11 Health Watch, wrote in a letter to Kennedy earlier this week that was acquired by The News.

“Today the (program) is at risk because staffing and policy approvals have not kept up with the increased demand for services — necessary, often lifesaving services that exposed, ill members rely on.”

Since taking over HHS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Kennedy has authorized drastic cuts to the WTC Health Program personnel, as well as the firing of program head Dr. John Howard, which was reversed last year after lawmakers from both sides of the aisle sounded the alarm.

The rare reversal from the Trump administration saw Kennedy restore two research grants and the jobs of 16 employees. When Kennedy testified before Congress last year and was questioned about his decisions he admitted the firings were “a mistake.”

Yet while the WTC Health Program is budgeted for 120 staffers, it currently has only 84, Chevat said.

“After the dust cleared from your waves of firings and rehirings, the program now has fewer staff members than when you took over in February,” Chevat says in his letter. “That means there are 36 vacancies, more than 25% of the 120 staff, the required minimum needed to ensure medical monitoring and treatment for the responders and survivors enrolled in the program.”

Enrollment in the program over the last two years has grown by 20,000, Chevat said. An additional 10,000 people are expected to enroll in the program this year.

“You have created a 25% staff shortfall in the face of a 25% increase in members,” Chevat wrote, adding that the reduced staff has caused slower treatment approvals, backlogged research grant authorizations, and inadequate supervision over cases.

In his letter, Chevat notes that Jan. 2 marked the 15-year anniversary of when the Zadroga Act, which created the WTC Health Program, was signed into law.

“You cannot run a program with more responders and survivors needing services with less staff and expect care not to suffer — especially a program that depends on so many vendors and contractors who need supervision. But that is what is happening,” Chevat wrote. “But despite the growing numbers of responders and survivors needing services, the program cannot hire the staff to meet that need because of the ongoing CDC-wide hiring freeze.”

More than 140,000 first responders and survivors rely on the WTC Health Program to get treatment and medication and monitor injuries and illnesses caused by the toxins kicked up into the air on 9/11 and the weeks that followed.

Since Kennedy took over HHS, 9/11 advocate groups haven’t been able to officially speak with anyone to learn if the WTC Health Program has verified any of the new medical conditions linked to the toxins that swirled above Ground Zero following the terror attacks or if any studies are being conducted on new maladies 9/11 sufferers are facing.

A steering committee had met nearly every month for 24 years to discuss health issues facing 9/11 responders and survivors until Kennedy took over, Chevat said. Invitations to WTC Health Program members to attend the meetings have been met with a curt response, indicating that the HHS has “issued a pause on mass communications and public appearances that are not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health.”

The 9/11 Health Watch is asking Kennedy to remove the hiring freeze so more staffers can be hired, lift communications restrictions between the program and the 9/11 survivor community and to finally decide on petitions that have been pending for more than three years that would add several cardiac, autoimmune and cognitive issues to the list of the program’s covered conditions.

An email to the HHS regarding Chevat’s letter was not immediately returned.

Local elected officials have voiced their displeasure on how the WTC Health Program is currently run.

In a letter that New York Democratic Sens. Kristin Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer wrote jointly last summer, they noted that the program’s support contracts for doctors and pharmacists “will soon be up for renewal.”

“As far as we know, there is no staff available to work on updating requirements and requests for proposals and there is insufficient staff to do the ongoing contract approvals the current contracts require,” the senators wrote. “Unless this contract work can occur in a timely fashion, clinical care will be further impacted because providers will not be paid and medications will not be filled.”

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