Addressing Maternal Health During CDC’s Ebola Response in the United States

Details

• Alternative Title:
  J Womens Health (Larchmt)
• Personal Author:
  Ellington, Sascha ; Perez, Mirna ; Morof, Diane ; Zotti, Marianne E. ; Callaghan, William ; Meaney-Delman, Dana ; Glover, Maleeka ; Ha, Quynh-Chau ; Jamieson, Denise J.
• Description:
  Previous outbreaks suggest that pregnant women with Ebola virus disease (EVD) are at increased risk for severe disease and death. Healthcare workers who treat pregnant women with EVD are at increased risk of body fluid exposure. Despite the absence of pregnant women with EVD in the United States, CDC activated the Maternal Health Team (MHT), a functional unit dedicated to emergency preparedness and response issues, on October 18, 2014. We describe major activities of the MHT. A high-priority MHT activity was to publish guiding principles early in the response. The MHT also prepared guidance documents, provided guidance and technical support for hospital preparedness, and addressed inquiries. We analyzed maternal health inquiries received through CDC-INFO, MHT, and CDC's Medical Investigations Team from August 2014 to December 2015. Internal call logs used to capture, monitor, and track inquiries for the three data sources were merged. Inquiries not related to maternal health issues and duplicates were removed. Each inquiry was categorized by route (email/phone), inquirer type, and topic. In total, 201 inquiries were received from clinicians, public health professionals, and the public. The predominant topic was related to infection control for high-risk situations such as labor and delivery. During the Ebola response, most inquiries were received via email rather than telephone, a notable shift compared to the H1N1 emergency response. Lessons learned during the H1N1 and Ebola responses are currently informing CDC's Zika Response, an unprecedented emergency response primarily focused on reproductive health issues.
• Subjects:
  Epidemics Female Health Personnel Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola Humans Maternal Health Pregnancy Pregnant Women Public Health
• Source:
  J Womens Health (Larchmt). 26(11):1141-1145
• Pubmed ID:
  29140769
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC5746310
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  CC999999/ImCDC/Intramural CDC HHS/United States
• Name as Subject:
  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S.)
• Place as Subject:
  United States
• Volume:
  26
• Issue:
  11
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:a4742c6945409d58eb2e56e587dbf97effac1711adde5399250c132331671724
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/50646/cdc_50646_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 818.14 KB ]