Ebola Disease Units Boast High-Level Tools, Few Rooms.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-17/ebola-disease-units-boast-high-level-tools-few-rooms.html

The state-of-the-art infectious disease centers now treating Ebola patients in the U.S. have world-class doctors and nurses with years of training, hot pressure chambers that can sterilize more than a ton of contaminated waste, and a record of success handling some of the world’s most demonic pestilence.

What they don’t have is a lot of room for patients.

Only four hospitals in the country have high-level containment units specially designed for treating exotic infectious diseases such as Ebola, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Each has the capacity to treat only a handful of Ebola patients at once.

“If there are any more mishaps we’re going to need more beds,” said Robert Glatter, an emergency room doctor at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. “We need to significantly increase” the number of sophisticated containment units.

The debacle at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, where two health workers were infected with Ebola while treating Thomas Eric Duncan before he died, exposed the lack of preparedness for treating Ebola at many hospitals. While various major hospitals are now gearing up to treat Ebola, for now patients are being treated at just these handful of centers.The state-of-the-art infectious disease centers now treating Ebola patients in the U.S. have world-class doctors and nurses with years of training, hot pressure chambers that can sterilize more than a ton of contaminated waste, and a record of success handling some of the world’s most demonic pestilence.

What they don’t have is a lot of room for patients.

Only four hospitals in the country have high-level containment units specially designed for treating exotic infectious diseases such as Ebola, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Each has the capacity to treat only a handful of Ebola patients at once.

“If there are any more mishaps we’re going to need more beds,” said Robert Glatter, an emergency room doctor at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. “We need to significantly increase” the number of sophisticated containment units.

The debacle at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, where two health workers were infected with Ebola while treating Thomas Eric Duncan before he died, exposed the lack of preparedness for treating Ebola at many hospitals. While various major hospitals are now gearing up to treat Ebola, for now patients are being treated at just these handful of centers.

Atlanta Hospital

Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, which is treating Amber Vinson, the second Dallas health-care worker to be infected by Ebola, has capacity for three patients in its biocontainment unit, which was created in 2002, said Holly Korschun, an Emory spokeswoman, in an e-mail.

Over the years, its workers “were trained in the use of personal protective equipment like full-body suits, and they ran drills for a dozen different scenarios,” she said.

The National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, which is treating Nina Pham, the first Dallas health-care worker to be infected with Ebola, has capacity to take two patients, an NIH official told Congress on Thursday. The unit, in Bethesda, Maryland, is designed to provide high-level isolation capabilities, the NIH said in a statement.

The biocontainment facility at the Nebraska Medical Center, which is treating NBC cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, would most likely be able to handle two to three patients at a time, depending on the severity of the cases, said Christopher Kratochvil, associate vice-chancellor for clinical research at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, in a telephone interview.