MARK ANDERSEN / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Monday, March 7, 2005 6:00 pm
OMAHA Sick with one of the world's 11 deadliest diseases, patients coming to this first-of-its-kind hospital wing will arrive in sealed plastic boxes. The air they breathe must be filtered to prevent the spread of highly contagious germs, like those causing plague or Ebola.
Health-care workers will reach through ports in the clear plastic containers to check patients possibly pained by smallpox sores or struggling to breathe their pneumonia brought on by anthrax, SARS or bird flu.
Arriving at the seventh floor of the Nebraska Medical Center, these patients will enter a beige- and cream-colored world of controlled air flows, controlled access and specially trained health professionals. Until they get better, the only family visits they receive will come via closed-circuit television.
Disease control is paramount in all aspects of this narrow, 10-bed wing, possibly the nation's first public biocontainment unit.
Its staff will wear impervious gowns, shoe covers, goggles and face masks sometimes even full hoods. And still, employees must shower before leaving.
All equipment must be sterilized in a special autoclave on the unit floor. Containers for lab specimens must be soaked in germ-killing solution before being transported to special laboratories. Even the air, all exiting through the roof, must pass through filters irradiated with ultraviolet light.
Why build a center to care for people with the Ebola virus or multi-drug resistant strains of tuberculosis?
"Because those patients will be there one way or another," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, who toured the unit on Monday, its first day of service. "This was built to give the safest possible protection."
The unit will serve patients infected either by naturally occurring diseases or biological attacks.
"Nebraska is better equipped today to respond to a bio-terrorist event than ever before," said Gov. Dave Heineman, also on the tour.
The objective of the 10-bed unit is to prevent a few sick patients from turning into an epidemic, Gerberding said.
Patients can be isolated here, eliminating the concern of a disease spreading while physicians sort out whether they are dealing with monkeypox or its deadlier cousin, smallpox.
While hospitals across the country have infectious control units, most lack this center's comprehensive safeguards.
Apart from a couple of two-bed biocontainment units associated with the CDC's and Army's germ research centers, the Omaha unit is unique. Gerberding called it a model for the nation.
In this respect and in other matters of public health and terrorism preparedness since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, she said, "Nebraska is leading the way."
The Omaha unit will stand empty when not needed. Its 30 specially trained nurses and respiratory therapist will be drawn from other departments a kind of bio-SWAT team.
This spring, state and hospital officials will extend offers to provide care for infected patients from a 10-state region. Eventually, that could be expanded to include the nation, said Patricia Lenaghan, who oversees the biocontainment unit.
One purpose of Gerberding's visit, Lenaghan said, is to check out what the Medical Center, the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the state of Nebraska have created from roughly $1 million.
The money was used to convert a former hospital pediatric transplant ward, which already had independent air handling. About half of the money came from the state's share of federal bio-preparedness dollars. The remainder came from the Medical Center and UNMC.
Reach Mark Andersen at 473-7238 or mandersen@journalstar.com.