Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won’t get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die. Now, an influential group of physicians has drafted a grimly specific list of recommendations for which patients wouldn’t be treated. They include the very elderly, seriously hurt trauma [...]

Pharmaceutical companies are assessing the worst-case scenario financial impact of an avian flu pandemic — and it is not a pretty picture.
In almost all likelihood, industry observers say that an avian flu pandemic would cause major staffing and supply shortages, forcing drug companies to drastically reduce manufacturing. Many drug firms would only produce essential, life-saving [...]

Older, sicker patients could be allowed to die in order to save the lives of patients more likely to survive a massive disaster, bioterror attack or influenza pandemic in California.
It’s not how nurses and doctors are accustomed to doing things, nor how Californians expect to be treated. But it is part of a sweeping statewide [...]

Almost five years after SARS, a broad-ranging University of Ottawa study that asked front-line health workers about their ability to cope with large-scale health crises found that many still don’t feel prepared to respond.
And many have little confidence in the system’s ability to handle a public health emergency.
The study, to be released today, began about [...]

The state Board of Medicine has suspended a Hurricane doctor for six months after he gave a dying patient a muscle-paralyzing drug as part of “end of life” care.
Dr. Sean DiCristofaro will start serving his suspension Friday. DiCristofaro told the medical board he administered the drug after the patient was gasping for breath and his [...]

Months before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made Atlanta lawyer Andrew Speaker the unwitting poster boy for drug-resistant tuberculosis, the agency and its advisers discussed a strategy to get more funding by publicizing the deadly strain of the disease, records show.
Frustrated that money for combating TB had dwindled as Congress favored newer threats [...]

As the school bus rolled to a stop outside her Lake County home, Beth Jones adjusted the bright yellow document protruding from the pouch of her daughter’s wheelchair, making sure it was clearly visible. In bold letters it warned, “Do Not Resuscitate.”
The DNR order goes everywhere with Katie, including her 2nd-grade classroom at Laremont School [...]

A state law enforcement investigators’ report — obtained by CNN from a confidential source close to the investigation — into the deaths of patients at a New Orleans hospital in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina provides new details about the events that occurred at Memorial Medical Center.

Sources familiar with the investigation tell CNN that the [...]

The global fight to contain the deadly H5N1 avian influenza virus is richer by over $400 million. Nine donor countries, including India, on Thursday pledged $406.1 million for pandemic preparedness.
While US was the single largest donor, pledging $195 million, Japan pledged $69 million, Germany $4.3 million and India $2 million.
The European Commission donated 78.4 million [...]

In the face of terrorism and catastrophic natural disasters, modern regional trauma systems that improve survival for critically injured patients are more vital than ever.
Yet many fundamental assumptions underlying these systems — such as the notion that it is imperative to send the sickest patients to the hospital first — have rarely been subjected to [...]