Medical Staff

Hospitals short on ventilators if bird flu hits

Executive Briefings Digest, April 25, 2006

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Public health officials say the nation's hospitals will not have enough ventilators to respond if the avian influenza (flu) virus caused a pandemic in the United States, reports The New York Times. Currently, there are 105,000 ventilators across the country. Approximately 100,000 of them are in use during a typical flu season.

However, in a worst-case scenario, the nation's hospitals would need as many as 742,500 ventilators. A typical ventilator costs $30,000, and hospital leaders say they simply cannot afford to buy and store hundreds of units that they may never use. Congress authorized $3.8 billion of the $7.1 billion President George W. Bush requested for flu preparedness, and almost 90% of it is earmarked for vaccines and antiviral drugs. Buying enough ventilators for a flu outbreak similar to the one that occurred in 1918 would cost about $18 billion, according to the Times.

Source: Healthcare Leadership Review



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