Patients with advanced ALS require electrical equipment to maintain life, and are often difficult to transport to evacuation centers. As such, preparedness for disasters is an especially important issue for patients with ALS. However, few reports have investigated disaster preparedness in this cohort.
Professor Osamu Kano, M.D., Ph.D. and his colleagues investigated the disaster preparedness of patients with ALS and their caregivers in Japan. They performed a cross-sectional questionnaire survey, in which >70% of theFurther, 86% of the respondents had no plans for alternative means of communication if theEven among the responders who had this equipment, 75% did not know how to use the bag-valve mask, and approximately 40% had insufficiently charged external batteries.
"Academic societies and local governments have been responding to disaster preparedness for patients with intractable diseases. We have taken better measures than before, but it is still not enough.