Published September 05, 2014

Dr. Mark Rupp, chief of the division of infectious diseases in the department of internal medicine at the Nebraska Medical Center, left, speaks as SIM USA President Bruce Johnson, center, and SIM Liberia country director Will Elphick, right, listen, at a news conference in Omaha, Neb., Friday Sept. 5, 2014, on the condition of ebola patient Dr. Rick Sacra, 51, who is treated at the center. Sacra, who served with North Carolina-based charity SIM, is the third American aid worker infected by the Ebola virus. He will begin treatment in the hospital's 10-bed special isolation unit, the largest of four such units in the U.S. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)The Associated Press

OMAHA, Neb. A third American aid worker, Dr. Rick Sacra, to be treated in the U.S. for the deadly Ebola virus arrived Friday at the Nebraska Medical Center's biomedical isolation unit the largest in the country.

Here are some questions and answers about the Omaha unit:

WHY IS THE COUNTRY'S LARGEST BIOCONTAINMENT UNIT IN OMAHA?

The Nebraska Biocontainment Patient Care Unit got its start in the years after Sept. 11 as Nebraska prepared to combat bioterrorism. By 2004, Nebraska ranked among the top six states for bioterrorism preparedness, according to a report by the nonprofit Trust for America's Health.

A year later, Nebraska's health agency pooled its allotment of federal bioterrorism dollars with contributions from the hospital and the University of Nebraska's medical school and opened the $1 million isolation unit.

The 10-bed, five-room unit is the largest quarantine and treatment facility in the country and designed to handle highly contagious and deadly infections including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), smallpox and plague. Other biocontainment units are in Montana, Maryland and at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, where two infected Americans were treated earlier this summer.

HOW MANY PEOPLE HAS THE UNIT TREATED?

The unit has so far briefly housed only one person, a traveler five years ago from Africa whose symptoms concerned emergency-room workers in a Nebraska town, according to unit officials. The patient was diagnosed with malaria, which doesn't require quarantine.

Read the original post:

A look at the Nebraska medical isolation unit where American Ebola patient being treated