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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsEbola patient from Liberia to be flown to U.S.
A patient with Ebola virus will be transferred to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, over the next several days, a statement released Thursday from the university says.
The statement does not say whether the patient is Dr. Kent Brantly, a Texas doctor infected with Ebola, or Nancy Writebol, an aid worker who also is infected, or someone else. University spokeswoman Holly Korschun said they could not release the name because of HIPAA, the federal law that protects health information,.
The Emory University Hospital has a special isolation unit set up in collaboration with the federal Centers for Disease Control, also in Atlanta. According to the statement, it is physically separate from other patient areas and has unique equipment and infrastructure that provide an extraordinarily high level of clinical isolation.
The unit is one of only four in the country. The doctors, nurses and staff are specially trained the the protocols and procedures necessary to care for that type of patient.
Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/07/31/6010018/texas-doctor-with-ebola-turns.html#storylink=cpy
Nobel_Twaddle_III
(323 posts)it is the others who think they are fine ... and travel
this is a far greater risk in my opinion.
dembotoz
(16,832 posts)longship
(40,416 posts)One of the patients being brought here has had a test vaccine the other day.
The pros from the CDC will take very good care of them, undoubtedly safely. It is what they do.
Abq_Sarah
(2,883 posts)The only effective weapon we currently have against Ebola is quarantine. Yes, there are vaccines in the pipeline but we're still years away from any effective treatment. It's extremely important to contain Ebola outbreaks and prevent them from spreading across borders. I doubt there's anything they can do in Atlanta that can't be done in Liberia. What is the justification for bringing someone infected with a level 4 pathogen into the US?
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)built with the CDC. It likely has a negative pressure room, the type used for anti-biotic resistant TB.
The patient will be transported using the CDC's air ambulance, which also is equipped with an isolation tent with it's own air filtration system.
Actually, we *do* have quarantine setups that they don't have in 3rd world country hospitals. We also can provide more advanced treatments. I'm surprised they didn't transport them sooner.
"Emory University Hospital sent to its staff the following memo Thursday:
"We have a highly specialized, isolated unit in the hospital that was set up in collaboration with the CDC to treat patients who are exposed to certain serious infectious diseases. This unit is physically separate from other patient areas and has unique equipment and infrastructure that provide an extraordinarily high level of clinical isolation. In fact, Emory University Hospital is one of just four facilities in the entire country with such a specialized unit."
http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/health/CDC-Dispatches-Plane-to-Transport-Ebola-Patient-269486261.html
B2G
(9,766 posts)MineralMan
(146,331 posts)Uff da!
B2G
(9,766 posts)lol.
Trying to figure out where the other one may end up.
MineralMan
(146,331 posts)In any case, you will never be in contact with the sick person.
B2G
(9,766 posts)magical thyme
(14,881 posts)http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3322039/
It looks like they built them near to BSL-4 research laboratories in order to care for lab workers who had accidental exposures:
Because of the limited and unique settings in which BSL-4 research has historically taken place in the United States, hospitalization for occupational exposures to VHF agents has typically been a dedicated facility remote from a conventional hospital, e.g., the medical containment suite (the slammer) at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Frederick, Maryland, USA, or the biocontainment patient care unit at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA....
...The Division of Intramural Research of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) recently completed construction of an integrated research facility with BSL-4 research space at its Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) in Hamilton, Montana. As part of the project, NIAID contracted with St. Patrick Hospital and Health Sciences Center (SPH), a regional referral medical center located in Missoula, Montana, for provision and staffing of a patient isolation facility to support the RML BSL-4 research program. The facility, known as a care and isolation unit (CIU) (23) was designed to care for RML workers who had either known or had potential exposure to, or illness from, work-related diseases. The facility had to be located within 75 miles of RML, had to provide the full range of standard in-patient care, including intensive care, and had to meet the facility design guidelines of the National Institutes of Health, Division of Occupational Health and Safety (NIH DOHS) (24). Furthermore, the hospital had to supply the personnel to provide the full range of medical and nursing care and to be able to accept a patient within 8 hours (this would entail notification of key members of the hospital hierarchy, transferring patients if the rooms were currently occupied, securing adequate nursing and support staff, and carrying out systems checks to ensure that air handling systems and autoclaves were operational). In addition to the physical facility, a training program for critical care nurses, physicians, and other medical personnel was a major component of the contract.
To satisfy the NIH requirements for the CIU, the following elements were needed: 1) access control, i.e., the ability to restrict entrance into the CIU to authorized persons only; 2) three separate stand-alone rooms, each with a bathroom and shower, separate air handling, and an anteroom separating the patient room from the hallway; 3) directional air flow from the hallway into the anteroom and from the anteroom into the patient room; 4) a dedicated exhaust system providing >12 air exchanges per hour to the patient rooms (including >2 outside air changes per hour); 5) passage of exhaust through a HEPA filter to the building exterior >8 feet above the rooftop and well removed from air intake ducts; 6) room surfaces constructed of seamless materials amenable to topical disinfection; 7) the capability for the full range of intensive care unit (ICU) monitoring and support, including the ability to perform limited surgery, hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis, Swan-Ganz catheter placement, and hemodynamic monitoring; and 8) a separate autoclave within the CIU for sterilizing all items that come out of a patient room.
B2G
(9,766 posts)I'm usually pretty successful.
magical thyme
(14,881 posts)and I have since tried a couple other searches and have yet to come up with hospital #4. I think they're hiding them from we the people...
Anyway, it explains why there appears to be only 1 plane, 1 portable isolated unit to transport the sick patients, and it took a week to arrange. They were originally set up for accidentally exposed lab workers. You don't generally have multiple workers getting needlesticks on any given day...