Pregnant and postpartum women have special needs during public health emergencies but often have inadequate levels of disaster preparedness. Thus, improving maternal emergency preparedness is a public health priority. More research is needed to identify the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches to how preparedness information is communicated to these women. A sample of web pages from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention intended to address the preparedness needs of pregnant and postpartum populations was examined for suitability for this audience. Five of the 7 web pages examined were considered adequate. One web page was considered not suitable and one the raters split between not suitable and adequate. None of the resources examined were considered superior. If these resources are considered some of the best available to pregnant and postpartum women, more work is needed to improve the suitability of educational resources, especially for audiences with low literacy and low incomes.
We studied the impact of converting to an all frozen blood system in a large regional blood center. Several basic assumptions were made including the availability of a sterile docking device which would increase the shelf life of deglycerolized blood to 72 hours. Our study indicated that the most economical manner in which to implement such a program would be to supply deglycerolized blood to all hospitals transfusing more than 500 units per year and to provide frozen units to hospitals transfusing less then this amount (those hospitals would deglycerolize the blood they use). The estimated total cost of the proposed conversion was 3.9 million dollars or a 76 per cent increase over the present operation. Relative to our present fee structure, the average cost of a unit of blood would increase 80 per cent if only frozen or deglycerolized red blood cells were distributed.
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