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When Ebola arrived unexpectedly in the United States in 2014 - carried in by two infected travelers (Texas & NYC) - it ignited a debate as to whether regular hospitals were truly equipped to deal with the rigorous infection control protocols required for handling a hemorrhagic fever patient.
While all hospitals need to be able to identify and isolate highly infectious patients, after two nurses were infected in Texas, it was decided that specially equipped and trained hospitals (Like Emory, the NIH, and UNMC) were better equipped to deal with the long-term treatment of these types of patients.In 2015 Nebraska Medicine - Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska - which successfully treated several medically evacuated Ebola patients in 2014 - became one of 9 Regional Ebola & Special Pathogens Treatment Centers designated by the HHS, and is part of a larger network Ebola treatment centers around the nation.
This afternoon, they have announced (twitter link) that a potentially exposed - but at this time asymptomatic - medical worker has arrived from the DRC, and is being monitored at the Nebraska Medical Center.They stress that at this time, the patient is not showing any symptoms and is not contagious, and that the patient will be monitored for up to two weeks. A more complete statement from the Nebraska Medicine - UNMC website follows:
American Being Monitored At Medical Center After Possible Ebola Exposure
Published December 29, 2018
Omaha, Neb – An American providing medical assistance in the Democratic Republic of Congo recently experienced a possible exposure to the Ebola virus and is in Omaha for monitoring. This person has no Ebola symptoms but will be monitored closely. Should any symptoms develop, the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit would be activated and the person admitted.
“This person may have been exposed to the virus but is not ill and is not contagious,” said Ted Cieslak MD, infectious diseases specialist with Nebraska Medicine and associate professor of epidemiology in the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health. “Should any symptoms develop, the Nebraska Medicine/UNMC team is among the most qualified in the world to deal with them.”
The individual was transported by private plane and automobile. Working with federal, state and county public health officials, they will be monitored in a secure area not accessible by the public or any patients. Monitoring could last up to two weeks.
While this person isn’t officially a patient, we will be honoring their request for privacy while they are being monitored here. Unless the need arises, we will not be providing updates in the status of this individual during the monitoring period. However, if it becomes necessary for this person to be transferred to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, regular updates should be expected.
Nebraska Medicine treated three patients with Ebola in 2014. In 2015, several others were monitored after exposures, none of whom developed the disease. Nebraska Medical Center is home to one of the nation’s few dedicated biocontainment units. In the years since the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa, infectious disease experts from Nebraska Medicine and its academic partner the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) have taken a leading role in training other health care workers across the U.S. and around the world in dealing with infectious diseases such as Ebola.
