Civil Defense Packaged Disaster Hospitals PDH McKinney PDH Page 1 PDH Page 2 PDH Page 3 Columbus PDH Partial Inventory Series 10000 PDH Back to Civil Defense Museum Main		Civil Defense Emergency Hospitals, later renamed Packaged Disaster Hospitals, were 200 bed mobile hospitals based on the military mobile hospitals. The CD hospitals were equipped with supplies for 30 days of operations. Over the years most of these hospitals were abandoned in place like so much of the other Civil Defense items across the country. Here is some info from various CD documents about the CD Hospitals and some photos of CD hospitals still in storage and one that I salvaged. CDEH Description From The 1964 DOD OCD Annual Statistical Report Federal responsibility for various medical and health functions in both natural and man-made disasters is assigned to Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, U. S. Public Health Service, (USPHS). The Division of Health Mobilization, Office of the Surgeon General, provides the program direction and service coordination for such activities. Included is the management of the Civil Defense Medical Stockpile which is designed to augment postattack domestic inventories of medical supplies and equipment essential to survivor medical care and to replace hospital beds which may have been destroyed or rendered unavailable due to radioactive fallout. The nucleus of the medical stockpile is the Civil Defense Emergency Hospital (CDEH). It is an austere but completely functional 200-bed general hospital designed to be set up within an existing structure such as a school, church, or community center which has been preselected by competent local authorities. The CDEH has the primary mission of assuring the continuity of essential medical care services at community level during the early postattack phase. The material contained in the CDEH provides a functionally balanced stock directly related to the potential medical care workload which may be experienced within a community during the postattack period. Accordingly, the unit constitutes a valuable resource asset which may be the only reliable source of material for expanding existing hospitals or as replacement for destroyed facilities. To set up the CDEH requires a floor area of 15,000 square feet which will permit separation of wards, operating rooms and other functional sections; and a suggested staffing complement of 10 physicians, 4 administrators and assistants, 34 professional nurses, 18 practical nurses, 6 anesthetists, 2 pharmacists, 128 medical aides and 124 other personnel, including dentists, laboratory technicians, X-Ray technicians, maintenance engineers, clerks, helpers, messengers, and housekeepers to be drawn from local resources. The CDEH contains provisions for the following departments: laboratory; pharmacy; X-Ray; operating rooms, including multiple operating suites; wards, admitting and sorting, and central supply. Auxiliary equipment included is a limited supply of medical and administrative records, a 15 KW generator to provide auxiliary power if local electrical supply is disrupted, and a 1,500 gal lon water tank and pumping unit for emergency water supply. CDEH's are assigned by Federal-State agreements, based on carefully developed criteria which include such factors as strategic locations, adequacy of storage facility and responsible custodianships. The CDEH is organized to function independently, or in conjunction with existing hospitals. Emergency Hospital Locations by OCD Regions And States 1964 Click to view larger. This chart is from the DOD OCD 1964 Annual Statistical Report. It show the distribution of the the Emergency Hospitals by Region and State. Note the total of 1930 at the top of the chart.