The Ebola virus has made landfall in the United States with patients popping up in both Dallas, Texas and New York City. But don’t freak out! To help contain the outbreak, the CDC relies on a handful of biocontainment isolation units to quarantine these highly infectious folks.
Luckily, the iso-ward at Emory University is practically in the CDC’s backyard, and Dr Bruce Ribner is here to give you a tour.
There are only four such facilities in the US that are qualified to handle highly infectious diseases such as Ebola and other haemorrhagic fevers: The National Institute for health in Bethesda, MD; the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha; St Patrick’s Hospital in Missoula, MT; and Emory University, just outside of Atlanta.
After patients are diagnosed and transported to one of these facilities, they are systematically cut off from the surrounding environment to minimize the spread of the disease. In the video above, Dr Bruce Ribner of Emory University Hospital explains how, exactly, his facility keeps the deadly disease in lockdown. [SciAm]