The McDonnell Douglas C-9 was a military version of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 airliner. It was produced as the C-9A Nightingale for the United States Air Force, and the C-9B Skytrain II for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. The final flight of the C-9A Nightingale was in September 2005, and the C-9C was retired in September 2011. The U.S. Navy retired its last C-9B in July 2014. The two remaining C-9s in Marine service were retired in April 2017.
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) is an agency within the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and is the official Combat Support Agency for countering weapons of mass destruction. According to the agency's Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2018 to 2022, the DTRA mission "enables DoD and the U.S. Government to prepare for and combat weapons of mass destruction and improvised threats and to ensure nuclear deterrence." The agency is headquartered in Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
Phoenix Air Group, often just referred to as Phoenix Air, is a non-scheduled airline headquartered in Cartersville, Georgia, USA, with the city's airport serving as its base. Founded in 1978 by Army helicopter pilot and race car driver Mark Thompson, Phoenix Air operates worldwide charter flights.
Aeromedical evacuation (AE) usually refers to the use of military transport aircraft to carry wounded personnel.
One use of the concept of biocontainment is related to laboratory biosafety and pertains to microbiology laboratories in which the physical containment of pathogenic organisms or agents is required, usually by isolation in environmentally and biologically secure cabinets or rooms, to prevent accidental infection of workers or release into the surrounding community during scientific research.
The 2007 tuberculosis scare occurred when Atlanta personal-injury lawyer Andrew "Drew" Speaker flew from Atlanta, Georgia to Paris, France and on to Greece and then Italy before returning on a flight from Prague, Czech Republic to Montreal, Canada, where he crossed over the border and back into the United States while infected with multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believed at the time that Speaker was suffering from extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). The incident sparked a debate in Congress on the failure of federal customs agents to stop him. Upon Speaker's return to the United States, the CDC placed him under involuntary isolation using a provision of the Public Health Service Act. With this action, Speaker became the first individual subjected to a CDC isolation order since 1963.
A flight nurse is a registered nurse who specialises in the field of providing comprehensive pre-hospital, emergency critical care, and hospital care to a vast scope of patients. The care of these patients is generally during aeromedical evacuation or rescue operations aboard helicopters, propeller aircraft or jet aircraft. On board a rescue aircraft you would find a flight nurse accompanied by flight medics and respiratory practitioners, as well as the option of a flight physician for comprehensive emergency and critical transport teams. The inclusion of a flight physician is more commonly seen in pediatric and neonatal transport teams. A critical care flight nurse must be able to deal with all age groups with broad critical emergencies. With no physicians on site the nurses scope of practice is expanded. The critical care experience is transferred over to a flight nurse with impacting factors such as altitude and changes in pressure, gravitational forces, and weather. Some patients may experience exacerbation's because of factors related to the cabin environment including hypoxia, limited mobility, gas expansion, and risk of injury related to turbulence and resources with definitive care are limited. Aeromedical evacuation crews coordinate with other organizations to plan for the safe and timely care and evacuation of patients. Crews must be prepared for patients suffering from trauma and mental health illnesses.
The 153d Airlift Wing is a unit of the Wyoming Air National Guard, stationed at Cheyenne Air National Guard Base, Wyoming. If activated to federal service, the Wing is gained by the United States Air Force Air Mobility Command.
In health care facilities, isolation represents one of several measures that can be taken to implement in infection control: the prevention of communicable diseases from being transmitted from a patient to other patients, health care workers, and visitors, or from outsiders to a particular patient. Various forms of isolation exist, in some of which contact procedures are modified, and others in which the patient is kept away from all other people. In a system devised, and periodically revised, by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), various levels of patient isolation comprise application of one or more formally described "precaution".
Emory University Hospital is a 733-bed facility in Atlanta, Georgia, specializing in the care of acutely ill adults. Emory University Hospital is staffed exclusively by Emory University School of Medicine faculty who also are members of The Emory Clinic. The hospital is renowned as one of the nation's leaders in cardiology and cardiac surgery, oncology, transplantation, ophthalmology, and the neurosciences.
The 375th Operations Group is the operational flying component of the United States Air Force 375th Air Mobility Wing. It is stationed at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois.
Negative room pressure is an isolation technique used in hospitals and medical centers to prevent cross-contamination from room to room. It includes a ventilation that generates negative pressure to allow air to flow into the isolation room but not escape from the room, as air will naturally flow from areas with higher pressure to areas with lower pressure, thereby preventing contaminated air from escaping the room. This technique is used to isolate patients with airborne contagious diseases such as: influenza (flu), measles, chickenpox, tuberculosis, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV), and Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Air medical services is a comprehensive term covering the use of air transportation, aeroplane or helicopter, to move patients to and from healthcare facilities and accident scenes. Personnel provide comprehensive prehospital and emergency and critical care to all types of patients during aeromedical evacuation or rescue operations aboard helicopter and propeller aircraft or jet aircraft.
The Aeromedical Isolation Team of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland was a military rapid response team with worldwide airlift capability designed to safely evacuate and manage contagious patients under high-level (BSL-4) bio-containment conditions. Created in 1978, during its final years the AIT was one of MEDCOM’s Special Medical Augmentation Response Teams comprising a portable containment laboratory along with its transit isolators for patient transport. Contingency missions included bioterrorism scenarios as well as the extraction of scientists with exotic infections from remote sites in foreign countries. The AIT trained continuously and was often put on alert status, but only deployed for “real world” missions four times. The AIT was decommissioned in 2010 and its mission assumed by one of the US Air Force’s Critical Care Air Transport Teams (CCATTs).
The United States biological defense program—in recent years also called the National Biodefense Strategy— refers to the collective effort by all levels of government, along with private enterprise and other stakeholders, in the United States to carry out biodefense activities.
Four laboratory-confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease occurred in the United States in 2014. Eleven cases were reported, including these four cases and seven cases medically evacuated from other countries. The first was reported in September 2014. Nine of the people contracted the disease outside the US and traveled into the country, either as regular airline passengers or as medical evacuees; of those nine, two died. Two people contracted Ebola in the United States. Both were nurses who treated an Ebola patient; both recovered.
This article covers the timeline of the 2014 Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa and its outbreaks elsewhere. Flag icons denote the first announcements of confirmed cases by the respective nation-states, their first deaths, and their first secondary transmissions, as well as relevant sessions and announcements of agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders; medical evacuations, visa restrictions, border closures, quarantines, court rulings, and possible cases of zoonosis are also included.
Operation United Assistance is a 2014 United States military mission to help combat the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa, including the part of the epidemic occurring in Liberia. The 101st Airborne Division headquarters was responsible for leading the mission.
A racal suit is a protective suit with powered air-purifying respirator (PAPR). It consists of a plastic suit and a battery-operated blower with HEPA filters that supplied filtered air to a positive-pressure hood. Racal suits were among the protective suits used by Aeromedical Isolation Team (AIT) of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases to evacuate patients with highly infectious diseases for treatment.
John J. Lowe is an American infectious disease scientist, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Health Security at University of Nebraska Medical Center, and Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental, Agricultural and Occupational Health at University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health. In 2014, he led Nebraska Medicine hospital’s effort to treat and care for Ebola virus disease patients and led the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s coronavirus disease 2019 response efforts.
