{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://susanwbrooks.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/inside-methodists-new-ebola-unit", "Inside Methodist's new 'Ebola unit'", "2016-10-12", "2016", "2016-10", "Republican", "House", "IN", "Susan Brooks", "B001284", "susanwbrooks.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Indiana University Health unveils its special pathogens unit, designed to fight exotic, highly contagious diseases.\n\n\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t(Photo: Matt Kryger/IndyStar)\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\nThe patient sat swathed in protective gear, only her eyes peeking out above her face mask. Nurses swarmed around her, garbed from head to toe in zombie-like suits. Packs on their backs filtered the air they breathed. The patient clutched\u00a0a pink basin encased in a plastic bag lest nausea overcome her.\nThe group raced through\u00a0IU Health\u00a0Methodist Hospital,\u00a0down an empty, remote corridor into a locked elevator and up to the sixth floor, where they reached the hospital\u2019s Special Pathogens Unit, thought to be the only such facility in the state.\nBorn out of the Ebola epidemic two years ago, the unit represents state-of-the-art care for patients who have or are suspected of having highly infectious, relatively rare diseases such as Ebola, Lassa fever, SARS or even bioterrorism. The hospital opened the one-room unit in January 2015 but Tuesday unveiled it to the media and public officials, who watched a drill unfold.\n\u201cThe idea is to be ready,\u201d said Dr. Douglas Webb, medical director for infection control for IU Health. \u201cThis is a result of \u2026 trying to prepare for the possibility that any of the major hospitals around the county could see a highly infectious contagious patient.\u201d\nIn the summer of 2015, the facility saw two patients, each for about three to four days, long enough to ascertain they had malaria, not Ebola, Webb said.\nWhen IU Health started contemplating such a unit in 2014, only four such sites existed nationwide, including one at the National Institutes of Health and one atEmory University Hospital\u00a0in Atlanta. That's where IU School of Medicine alum Dr. Kent Brantly went to recover after contracting Ebola while working as a medical missionary in Liberia.\nSince then, about 40 to 50 hospitals have created units designed to handle such cases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has certified the IU Health unit as an assessment center, but the facility also is capable of treating these diseases, Webb said.\nA hospital in\u00a0Nebraska has the largest such unit, with capacity for 10 patients. Most such units, however, have space for only a few patients, and most sit idle for months or even years between suspected cases.\nRenovating the space for Methodist\u2019s unit, where the room is under negative pressure to keep pathogens from escaping, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, Webb said.\nU.S. Rep. Susan Brooks praised IU Health\u2019s efforts Tuesday before watching a drill of how it could operate in a crisis.\n\n\t\u00a0\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\tIU Health infectious disease experts are ready in case that a highly contagious disease such as SARS or Ebola comes to Indiana. Paramedics, nurses and doctors are part of the hospital\u2019s new special pathogens unit, specially designed in the wake of the 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic. IU Health Methodist hospital is now capalbe to care for a patient with Ebola or a similar disease.\u00a0\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\u00a0\n\t\t\t\u201cWe as a country have really not taken biological threats as seriously as we should be taking them,\u201d she said. \u201cI think they (IU Health) will be a national model.\u201d\n\t\t\n\t\n\nFor now, IU Health wants to make sure it\u2019s ready, training about 20 staff members in how to handle such concerns.\nOn Tuesday, the simulation kicked off with the arrival of an actor pretending to be a\u00a0student suffering symptoms consistent with Lassa fever, a\u00a0viral hemorrhagic illness that occurs in West Africa. The student had recently returned from Nigeria, which in the past year has seen an outbreak of nearly 275 cases of that disease.\nShe arrived in an ambulance, and staff whisked her to the unit. Had the drill been real, a team of hospital environmental specialists \u2014\u00a0also dressed in protective gear \u2014 would have swooshed behind, cleaning everything in the patient\u2019s wake. Once the patient entered the room, anyone who went in would have to exit through a rear door.\nRed tape on the floor marks the no-return line for those stepping through double doors. The only time both sets of doors open is to allow a patient to enter.\nThe staff wore suits equipped with air-purifying respirators, mobile air filters that provide the wearer with a constant flow of clean air through a hose.\nEverything that could have had contact with the patient\u2019s germs is decontaminated, including the vials that hold the blood the nurses draw to test for disease. The nurses double-bag the vials and wipe the plastic bag\u00a0with bleach. When the vials reach the lab, the staff don personal protective equipment of their own and study the samples under a special hood.\nNurses tending to the patient will spend no more than two hours at a time encased in the protective suits. Although the suits can be put on relatively quickly, taking them off requires attention and time.\nA trained observer watches over video as the two nurses carefully remove the clothing, including multiple pairs of gloves. One missed step could prove fatal.\n\u201cIt\u2019s like peeling an onion layer by layer,\u201d said Stephen Kitts, a nurse on the unit.\nOne of the most expensive costs of operating such a unit is disposing of the potentially toxic waste it produces, said Dr. Bryan Schmitt, IU Health clinical pathologist. Little touches abound, such as lining vomit basins with kitty litter-like material so that if the patient is sick, the waste is more solid. The hospital stores the waste until a diagnosis is reached because it must use a special vendor certified to remove the most highly toxic detritus.\nHealth care workers\u2019 safety is taken into account at every step.\n\u201cThere\u2019s a need for a unit like this. I don\u2019t think there needs to be a lot of them,\u201d Webb said. \u201cWe just want to try to recognize these unusual diseases of having this property of being highly contagious and very lethal.\u201d\nCall IndyStar reporter Shari Rudavsky at (317) 444-6354. Follow her onTwitter:\u00a0@srudavsky.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["http://susanwbrooks.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/inside-methodists-new-ebola-unit"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.487647881731391, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}