The third American infected with Ebola in Liberia, identified as Rick Sacra, MD, has been transferred to The Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha for treatment.
Dr. Sacra will be cared for in the hospital's 10-bed Biocontainment Patient Care Unit, which was designed to care for these types of patients and is staffed with infectious disease specialists. The Nebraska Medical Center is treating the patient at the request of the U.S. State Department.
This is the third time an American with Ebola will be treated in the United States. The other two American Ebola patients were treated at Atlanta-based Emory University Hospital, where they both successfully beat the disease and were released.
"Just like the facility at Emory University…we are uniquely prepared to handle infectious diseases here," said Phil Smith, MD, the biocontainment unit's medical director.
Along with the Atlanta-based Emory unit and this one in Omaha, there are only two other similar facilities in the United States: the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and the Rock Mountain Laboratory in Hamilton, Mont.
"This is one of the safest places in the country for this patient to be treated, both for the public and for the medical professionals providing care," said Angela Hewlett, MD, associate medical director of the Biocontainment Unit.
The unit has an air-handling system to make sure microorganisms do not spread beyond patient rooms, and there is a dunk tank for lab specimens and a pass-through autoclave so hazardous materials are decontaminated before leaving the unit, according to Dr. Smith. The unit has only been activated one other time, for a potential Ebola case that turned out to be malaria.
According to a CBS Boston report, the team treating Dr. Sacra at The Nebraska Medical Center — 35 physicians, nurses and other medical staff — will focus on keeping Dr. Sacra hydrated and stable.
There are no licensed drugs or vaccines to treat Ebola, but the drug known as ZMapp — which has been given to seven Ebola patients, two of whom later died from Ebola — proved 100 percent effective in a trial on monkeys. However, the developer has said its supply of ZMapp is now exhausted, according to CBS.
Ebola has killed more than 1,550 people from March to Aug. 28, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.