I received a comment yesterday from bloggrr re: my blog on Survival Skills. She asked about shelf life of Synthroid which got me to thinking about medications and how they would be affected by a disaster.

Bloggrr, the shelf life of Synthroid, is said to be about 2 years. However, it is prone to degrade faster in response to light, temperature, air, and humidity. Some of the disaster preparation sites I visited suggest that everyone taking medication stockpile a 7 to 14 day supply. You would rotate them so your supply was always fresh. Some say not to stockpile and I couldn't find anybody discussing what to do if you needed your meds for over 14 days.

There are message boards where posters discuss preparedness and meds and some of them mentioned learning about herbal remedies. Of course, herbal remedies wouldn't work for everyone. This led me to consider other scenarios such as what would happen to people who need anti-depressants, insulin, or antipsychotics. What about those living on a fixed income? Those on Medicare and/or Medicaid? It would be difficult for them to stockpile even if they found a Dr. who would prescribe extra. It would, of course, depend on what type of disaster we're talking about. If a hurricane or tornado hit us then we might be fine with a small stockpile of meds or we might be fine without them if we could leave our area and go to one that wasn't affected. A Jericho incident is a whole other story. What if the entire USA was affected? That really is a scary thought.
The websites listed below can do more justice to this subject than I can ever hope to and that's a fact.

The Red Cross has an excellent website that lists everything we should do before a disaster hits.
http://www.redcross.org/services/disaster/beprepared/prep.html


Here's a guide to disaster supply kits:
http://www.pueblo.gsa.gov/cic_text/family/disaster-guide/kits.htm


Bioterrorism Disaster Preparedness:
http://home.earthlink.net/~douglaspage/id61.html