U.S. and D.C. officials toured GW Hospital’s decontamination unit Thursday, the first facility developed in the city to handle biological terror patients after Sept. 11.
The unit has two sets of eight showers, with separate entrances for men and women on the 23rd Street side of the hospital. GW biohazard expert Dr. Craig D’Atley said the hospital can also set up a tent with showers to handle three more patients in an extreme emergency.
The decontamination rooms, clearly marked with orange “Hazmat Showers” signs, contain standard household showerheads, soap and equipment handy for hospital workers like boots, gloves and masks.
The masks are equipped to provide purified air or actually use power to force purified air into a worker’s lungs if the level of exposure to hazardous materials is considered severe.
Vents next to the showers blow air out of the room, which D’Atley calls “an important safety feature” of the facility.
Contaminated water is collected underneath the shower area and either diluted and released into the city sewer system or collected by D.C. hazardous materials teams, D’Atley said. He said hospital workers and city officials evaluate the level of contamination in the water and decide how to dispose of it.
Patients can be directed from the decontamination showers directly to the emergency room or elsewhere in the hospital, he said, depending on the number of patients and magnitude of exposure or symptoms; critical patients are given priority in the ER.
Since Sept. 11, D’Atley said hospital employees have received extra training in protective equipment and revisions in the emergency response plan, like communication and where to get information. He said most trauma patients in the terrorist attacks were burn victims, and the anthrax and bioterror threats occurred more in the aftermath of the plane crash at the Pentagon in Virginia.
D’Atley said anthrax was a “different problem” for the hospital, but workers did not receive any extra training.
“I think we know that well enough,” he said.
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson and D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams viewed the facility after a press conference at the hospital Thursday. Thompson announced a $1.1 billion government spending initiative to improve public health services, in particular bioterror preparation, nationwide.
He also awarded Williams a check for the District’s $12 million allotment.
At the press conference, University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg said the decontamination facility will move to the new GW Hospital under construction across 23rd Street from the current site, scheduled for completion in August, when the building is finished.
