Safe blood and blood products
Distance learning materials
Revised Edition
631 pages, 2002 (5 manuals) [E]
ISBN 92 4 154546 1
Sw. fr. 120 / US $ 108
In developing countries: Sw. fr. 84
Order no. 1150490
“… an excellent source of virtually all the important information. …extremely well done…”
- Transfusion International (from the 1st edition)
Ensuring the safety of blood for transfusion is a key prevention strategy in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Providing safe blood is a multi-step process, from the recruitment and selection of low-risk blood donors to its issue for transfusion to its administration to a patient. The training of all staff involved in this process is essential to ensure the safety and adequacy of the blood supply.
Many countries lack the capacity to provide comprehensive training for all staff involved in blood transfusion. These learning materials have therefore been designed specifically for use in distance learning programmes in blood safety - a flexible, cost-effective way of increasing access to training whilst making the best use of limited training resources.
The modules have been designed for staff responsible for donor recruitment, blood collection, and the processing and issue of blood for transfusion. The interactive, practical style, with learning objectives, activities, self-assessment questions, progress checks, and action plans, encourages users to focus on improving approaches and procedures in their own blood centre or hospital blood bank. Most of the training is designed to take place at the workplace in the context of the performance of daily work.
The modules have been updated in this second edition to reflect scientific and technical developments since the first issue. They consist of a set of four spiral-bound modules and a Trainer’s Guide.
Also available:
Through the development of these materials, WHO aims to support national blood programmes in ensuring the safety of national blood supplies and their accessibility and appropriate use for all patients who require transfusion.
Emergency relief operations
Kevin M. Cahill, MD, Editor
Fordham University Press, N.Y. 2003
ISBN 0-8232-2240-3
US $ 20.00
An essential companion to Basics of Humanitarian Missions, the first volume in this series, this book is a practical guide to planning and managing relief operations in a range of specific emergency settings. The eleven chapters - each written by a leading professional - describe solutions to political, military, diplomatic, medical, and organizational challenges facing humanitarian operations.
Designed for students, teachers, practitioners, policy-makers, journalists, and other professionals, Emergency Relief Operations provides detailed case studies and tested strategies applicable to both natural and man-made crises - from floods and earthquakes to medical emergencies, civil strife, and forced migration.
Ted R. Gurr, Barbara Harff: Early Warning Systems. From Surveillance to Risk Assessment to Action
Ed Tsui: Initial Response to Complete Emergencies and Natural Disasters
Frederick M. Burkle Jr, M.D.: Evidence-Based Health Assessment Process in Complex Emergencies
Tom Arnold: Concern Worldwide’s Approach to Water and Sanitation and Shelter Needs in Emergencies
Francis M. Deng: A Challenge of Peace, Security, and Nationbuilding. Internal Displacement
Gerald R. Martone: Protection Strategies in Humanitarian Interventions
Judy A. Benjamin: Issues of Power and Gender in Complex Emergencies
Kevin M. Cahill, M.D.: Clinical Aspects of Malnutrition
Timothy Cross: Military-NGO Interaction
Randolph Martin: An Introduction to NGO Field Security
Larry Hollingworth: Resolutions, Mandates, Aims, Missions, and Exit Strategies
Richard Ryscavage, S.J.: The Transition from Conflict to Peace
The editor, Kevin Cahill, MD, is to be congratulated on this book. He is Director of the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs at Fordham University and President of the Center for International Health and Cooperation in New York City. He is the author or editor of 26 books, an internationally known expert on tropical medicine, and a leader in humanitarian campaigns. His Basics of International Humanitarian Missions is reviewed elsewhere in this Journal.
Et Si l’homme devait mourir;
Message d’un médecin réanimateur
And if man had to Die;
Reflexions of a critical care physician
By Jean Marie Fonrouge. Autrement Editeur. Paris, 2003
Besides the healing art and science that medicine is, it is also the humanitarian profession that nurtures meditation on the very meaning of man - on life and death. And this tends to be even more pronounced among critical care physicians and emergency reanimatologists who, day in day out, find themselves at grips with the flickering breath or failing pulse of a patient struggling for life at the razor’s edge. Et si l’homme devait mourir…
Such a physician - “specialist” somehow sounds gauche here - is Jean Marie Fonrouge, a man of profound convictions, faith and humanity, personal involvement in his patients, thorough knowledge of his science, matured in the intricacies of emergency care, hardened - ingemuch as one can be - against the cruelty of imminent death, humbled by the fickleness of nature, and ready to join in the grief of a family bereaved of its love. This is the doctor who, with concrete case histories and profound thoughts, shares his convictions, doubts, pride, fears, professional ecolness and personal philosophy, all expressed in the impeccable language of Molière and the feeling of a poet. A book worth translating into other languages.
More than a “message” that the subtitle indicates, this is the ory of a physician, legal expert, father, humanist and citizen steeped in the joys, sadnesses and at times arrogance of the new science of reanimatology; and where there is error or arrogance, Fonrouge denounces with courage and vehemence, while a little smile or human gesture is praised without patronising. This is a book that all health professionals should read and all persons who care about man will enjoy.
The International Association of its founding members.
S.W.A. Gunn, MD