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It also led to further federal partnerships and the establishment of the National Ebola Training and Education Center (NETEC), which trains health professionals nationwide to prepare for catastrophic diseases. It gave them practical knowledge that advanced their understanding of pathogens and how to treat and contain them.

It was a defining experience for the team. Two patients were treated and discharged one, whose disease was advanced by the time he arrived, didn’t make it home. physicians and a journalist who had been exposed to the deadly virus were flown to the place best equipped to treat them: Nebraska. Then, in 2014, Ebola hit West Africa, and U.S. UNMC and Nebraska Medicine continued to prepare - training staff, running drills, learning and getting better. Then it sat empty, as the world waited and attention drifted to other things. The Nebraska Biocontainment Unit officially opened in 2005. “Not only did we stand it up and invest in and build this structure, but we prepared year after year.”

“We took it seriously,” said Ken Bayles, Ph.D., executive director of basic science research for UNMC’s Global Center for Health Security. Immediately, their leadership began drawing up plans for a biocontainment unit: a 10-bed facility, the largest of its kind at the time, fitted with negative air flow, a pressurized entrance and decontamination autoclaves, which would provide a safe environment to deal with the world’s worst pathogens. The veiled, recondite threat of terrorism meant unknown dangers, including the possibility of biological warfare, thrown into sharp relief by the series of anthrax attacks that followed the World Trade Center’s fall.įew responded to the call with the diligence of UNMC and Nebraska Medicine. In the wake of 9/11, as the country scrambled to respond to a new, devastating threat, hospitals, universities and state governments were called on to prepare. They trained their physicians, nurses and staff to wear personal protective equipment - the heavy hazmat-style layers that protect against dangerous pathogens - perfected medical procedures under the weight of those layers and ran drills on providing care in areas of deadly contamination. For 15 years, the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Nebraska Medicine prepared for this moment.