Experts Say Medical Ventilators Are in Short Supply in Event of Bird Flu Pandemic

From The New York Times:

No one knows whether an avian flu virus that is racing around the world might mutate into a strain that could cause a human pandemic, or whether such a pandemic would cause widespread illness in the United States. But if it did, public health experts and officials agree on one thing: the nation's hospitals would not have enough ventilators, the machines that pump oxygen into sick patients' lungs. Right now, there are 105,000 ventilators, and even during a regular flu season, about 100,000 are in use. In a worst-case human pandemic, according to the national preparedness plan issued by President Bush in November, the country would need as many as 742,500.

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