EDs need plan to contact smallpox-vaccinated staff
EDs need plan to contact smallpox-vaccinated staff
A new report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies in Washington, DC, urges EDs to create systems in which staff vaccinated for smallpox can be called up quickly in the event of an outbreak. The committee that wrote the report also recommended that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta support the creation of registries of health care workers and others who have been vaccinated.
ED preparations for a smallpox outbreak should focus "as much on the availability of a good response plan and the ability to quickly coordinate responders as it does on the number of responders who have been vaccinated in advance," says committee chair Brian Strom, MD, chair and professor of biostatistics and epidemiology, and of medicine and pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia.
The committee urges state and federal authorities to consider including former military service members and reservists who have received the vaccine. Their assistance could help keep health and emergency systems from being overwhelmed in the event of an attack, the report says.
For a copy of Review of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Smallpox Vaccination Program Implementation: Letter Report #4, go to: www.nap.edu. Enter the title in the "search title" box.
A new report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies in Washington, DC, urges EDs to create systems in which staff vaccinated for smallpox can be called up quickly in the event of an outbreak.Subscribe Now for Access
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