Florida is leading the country in new HIV infections. But the figure hasn’t been seen as a crisis by Gov. Rick Scott or the top health officer of the state, Dr. John Armstrong.

With the spread of the disease, Scott and Armstrong have put four years of personnel cuts in the Department of Health, shrinking the size of nation’s health departments.

Now, the state lawmakers have come up with queries that whether the spending decisions have resealed into a sicker population in a state where HIV infections have been going up with every year since 2012 as they’ve declined countrywide.

As per the state and federal data, in 2014, Miami-Dade and Broward were on 1st and 2nd position in the US in new HIV infections per 100,000 residents.

Armstrong said that Florida going to spend a record $34 million on HIV and AIDS prevention in 2016, and credit goes to a federal grant.

In a statement, he said, “Staff reductions did not impact the surveillance, education, prevention, counseling, testing, care and treatment of HIV/AIDS patients”.

However, according to some advocates Armstrong has played a role in the problem because he hardly every talks about HIV or AIDS and instead always focus on fighting childhood obesity.

The director of legislative affairs for the AIDS Health Care Foundation, which provides treatment and prevention across Florida, David Poole, said that lack of leadership at the head of the agency talking about this creates a hurdle.

Poole served the Department of Health’s HIV program for more than a decade. He mentioned that staff reductions have held back prevention, and resulted into an increase in cases.

Ron Ford, 53, of Clearwater, an ex HIV caseworker who is suffering from the virus said that silence is equivalent to death. Ford said that people need to start talking about it to avoid its occurrence.