This week, UTMB held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new Biocontainment Care Unit, a state-of-the-art facility to provide care for patients with high-containment pathogens such as Ebola. The unit, located on the Galveston Campus, has six specially outfitted hospital rooms segregated from the rest of the patient treatment areas that feature special ventilation systems to prevent any pathogens to escape via the airflow. UTMB is staffing the biocontainment unit with 58 handpicked health care workers who train quarterly and are on call to respond to an outbreak of a highly infectious disease, should one occur. Construction of the unit began in October 2017, cost approximately $17 million and was funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Texas Department of State Health Services and UTMB.
See full story: TMC News Infectious Disease faculty, Susan McClellan, M.D., Medical Director of UTMB’s Biocontainment Care Unit.