UNMC Chancellor Jeffrey P. Gold, M.D., this week testified before a U.S. congressional committee outlining proposals for expansion of the medical center’s role in fighting Ebola and other infectious diseases.
Nebraska Medicine’s Biocontainment Unit on the UNMC campus has now treated three Ebola patients. Rick Sacra, M.D., and Ashoka Mukpo were cured and released, while Martin Salia, M.D., arrived unresponsive and in very critical condition and died following what Dr. Gold called “truly heroic efforts.” Caring for these patients has thrust the medical center into a position of world leadership in Ebola care.
Dr. Gold was in Washington, D.C., to testify as the federal government debates Emergency Supplemental legislation to respond to Ebola and similar outbreaks. The president has asked Congress for $6.2 billion to attack Ebola in Africa and beef up readiness infrastructure in the U.S.
In his testimony, Dr. Gold said: “Our biocontainment unit is one of four in the nation. The capacity and the number of units in the nation must be increased, and a national readiness plan that trains health care providers must be established.”
See C-SPAN coverage of Dr. Gold’s presentation here.
As a top academic medical center, UNMC is ready to take a leading role in that plan, Dr. Gold said. He laid out a proposal that would double the Biocontainment Unit’s capacity and make UNMC a national training and accrediting site.
Separately, he also put forth a long-range vision for a new state-of-the-art infectious diseases facility at UNMC, to house a larger Biocontainment Unit, educational programs and a simulation facility. It also could be the site of a national plasma-serum bank, and include on-site laboratory, surgical and scanning facilities. UNMC’s strategic location, in the middle of the continental U.S., makes it an ideal spot for a national infectious diseases center, Dr. Gold said.
Plans for such a center are preliminary and are separate from the immediate emergency funds request.
Dr. Gold also spoke with lawmakers about the investments medical centers made in Biocontainment Unit preparedness, and the unreimbursed costs associated with treating Ebola patients at the request of the U.S. State Department.
Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H., director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in his testimony lauded the Nebraska Medicine-UNMC Ebola response and said the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit should receive funding from the emergency request.