Thursday, July 30, 2009
Survey: Will health care workers stay home during a pandemic?
About 1 out of every 6 public health workers say they would not report for work during a pandemic influenza emergency, a study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore has found.
According to a study abstract, 16 percent of the 1,835 public health workers surveyed said they would not report for work regardless of an emergency's severity. However, this is a sharp decline from a 2005 study by the same research team in which 40 percent of survey respondents said they were unlikely to report to work during such an emergency.
In other news, the International Safety Equipment Association in Arlington, VA, sent a letter (.pdf file) on July 23 to the Department of Health and Human Services saying personal protective equipment will not be available in sufficient quantities to keep health care workers safe during a flu pandemic unless HHS replenishes and supplements PPE in the Strategic National Stockpile.