There are thousand of hospitals in the U-S, but only four with isolation units suitable for isolating Ebola-infected patients. One of them is in the Inland Northwest, but not where you might expect to find it. It's Saint Patrick, a non-profit hospital in Missoula Montana, a town of about 69-thousand people not too far from the Idaho state line.
Saint Patrick has a special isolation wing to treat highly infectious patients. It's one of only four hospitals in the country so equipped.
The unit was built in 2007 because a federal laboratory doing research on hazardous infectious diseases is just down the highway. The Rocky Mountain Laboratory works with influenza viruses: prion disease, antibiotic-resistant bacteria and bio-terror threats. Some of its researchers are even working on ebola vaccines.
National Institute of Health officials wanted a nearby hospital to be equipped to treat any of its workers who might be accidentally exposed to deadly microbes.
The Saint Patrick isolation unit consists of three rooms which can be sealed off from the rest of the building and operated independently. Each room has an air lock entrance. In addition, air is scrubbed by sophisticated filters before it's discharged above the hospital roof.
So far, no ebola patients have been flown to Saint Patrick, but two infectious disease specialists last month flew to Sierra Leone to learn more about the disease and how best to treat it.
