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Ebola-Proof Plane? How The US Will Bring Sick Patients Home

Ebola-Proof Plane? How The US Will Bring Sick Patients Home

Question: How do you bring U.S. citizens home from Africa who are infected with a virus as deadly as ebola without endangering other U.S. citizens?

Answer: With an ebola-proof plane. That’s the idea anyway.

Efforts are well under way to evacuate two seriously ill American ebola patients within the next few days from Africa to the U.S. in a specialized plane with special equipment, CNN reports.

When the plane lands in Georgia with a patient in a microbial containment system, it
will be the first time that someone diagnosed with ebola will be known to be in the U.S., according to CNN.

The equipment on the plane includes three layers of protection: a room entirely encased in plastic sealed off from the outside; a crew of healthcare givers wearing protective gear including doctors and nurses; and a patient’s bed, also entirely sealed off with care administered through gloves built in to the sides, according to a CNN video demonstration.

There’s negative air pressure in the plastic room, CNN reports — meaning the pressure is lower inside the room than outside so if there’s a rip in the plastic, air will rush in, not out.

Ebola is a not an airborne disease so it doesn’t really matter whether air rushes in or out, a CNN commentator said, but it’s a protocol that’s being followed. Inside the plane, there’ll be a doctor, nurse, epidemiologist, maybe anesthesiologist and a single patient — just one patient at a time is being brought home.

The healthcare crews will wear protective gear. All care as they monitor the patient’s heart rate, temperature, respiratory reactions — everything has to be done through all of this

Even if the patient starts going into cardiac arrest or has violent vomiting or bleeding — he or she must be treated with gloves reaching through the sides of the protective layer because it’s the body fluids that make people sick with ebola.

A medical charter plane that left Georgia on Thursday flew to Liberia and the plan is to bring Nancy Writebol and Dr. Kent Brantly separately to the U.S. within days, officials said.

They were infected with ebola while treating ebola patients in Liberia in July, and have been in serious condition there for days — just two of the more than 1,300 people believed sickened in the worst ebola outbreak in recorded history, CNN reports.

Which patient travels first depends on which one is in the best condition to travel, said Todd Shearer, spokesman for Samaritan’s Purse, the Christian aid group with which both are affiliated. The plane is equipped to bring only one patient at a time, Shearer said Friday.

The Americans will arrive at Georgia’s Dobbins Air Reserve Base before being transferred to an Emory University medical facility in Atlanta, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said.

Emory University Hospital has a specially built isolation unit that is designed to treat patients exposed to infectious diseases like Ebola, the hospital said in a statement Thursday. It is one of only four units in the U.S.

“Emory University Hospital physicians, nurses and staff are highly trained in the specific and unique protocols and procedures necessary to treat and care for this type of patient,” the statement said. “These procedures are practiced on a regular basis throughout the year so we are fully prepared for this type of situation.”

Dr. Bruce Ribner, who heads the Emory University Hospital isolation unit that will care for the patients, said that one of them “will arrive in the next several days, and then a second patient will be coming a few days after that.”

“The patients have been evaluated, and (medical officials in Liberia) feel they are safe to transport,” Ribner said.

The evacuation plane stopped Friday at the Azores’ Lajes Air Base on its way to Liberia, according to Maria Francisca Seabra, a spokeswoman for Portugal’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Writebol’s and Brantly’s best chance to survive is to get back to the U.S., said Charles Chiu, a virologist with the University of California San Francisco.

When the evacuation plans were made public Thursday, social media in the U.S. reflected fear. Many posts called for keeping the infected patients out of the country.

Western health care professionals say they can contain ebola patients quickly, CNN reports.