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A U.S. Army team stands poised to evacuate patients anywhere in the world who may have a possibly fatal infectious disease (or who may have been affected by biological weapons) and bring them back to the United States for diagnosis and treatment.
ATLANTA—The U.S. Army's Aeromedical Isolation Team can rapidly and safely evacuate a limited number of patients with potentially fatal infectious diseases to a safe facility, says an article in the March issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, CDC's peer-reviewed journal, which tracks new and reemerging infections worldwide.
Suppose that an American civilian or military scientist working abroad on a field study becomes very ill with a highly contagious, possibly fatal infection (Ebola virus, for example) that has no effective vaccine, medication, or treatment. What can be done to ensure quick diagnosis, state-of-the-art treatment, and safety for the health professionals involved?
The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) maintains an elite team—the Aeromedical Isolation Team—that stands ready to fly, on 6 to 12 hours' notice, anywhere in the world to evacuate patients and bring them back to USAMRIID for diagnosis and treatment. The team—a physician, a registered nurse, and four to six medics—is suited up (PVC coveralls, hood, vinyl boots, respirator) to prevent being infected by any bug the patient has. The patient is isolated in a containment stretcher with a separate ventilating system, and before the team and the patient board the Army transport, they are decontaminated. Once back at USAMRIID, all items worn or used are decontaminated or disposed of, the infecting organism can be studied in biosafety level 4 labs (designed for such deadly bugs as smallpox and Ebola), and the disease can be diagnosed. The patient is treated in the only dedicated patient-care suite in the world designed for medical care under maximum biological containment.
The team has been on several missions. One took them to a quarantine facility in Virginia, where imported monkeys had Ebola fever. Four of the civilian animal handlers became infected, but team members did not, because of the effectiveness of their protective gear. The infected handlers did not become ill, probably because that strain of Ebola was not harmful to humans. Other missions have taken them to Sweden (to assist a patient with suspected viral hemorrhagic fever after travel to Africa) and to Ohio (to deal with buried biological weapons, which had been used for military training and were deactivated in 1954).
For more information, contact Caree Vander Linden at 301-619-2285 (tel) or caree@ftdetrck-ccmail.army.mil. Access the full article at http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol5no2/christopher.htm. All material in Emerging Infectious Diseases is in the public domain and may be used without special permission; proper citation, however, is appreciated.
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