Rick Sacra, MD, got right to the point, “You gave me my life back. I will never forget that as long as I live. You have my undying gratitude.”
The Massachusetts-based family practice physician was the first Ebola patient treated in the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit (NBU). He shared those heartfelt words with a room full of people, many of whom were involved in curing his Ebola exactly 10 years ago. The event, held on Sept. 26 in the Wigton Heritage Center, was a reunion of sorts, bringing together Dr. Sacra, current and former colleagues from the biocontainment unit and the man who founded and led the unit to international prominence: retired infectious diseases physician Phil Smith, MD.
Dr. Smith reflected on the call he received a decade ago while he was walking with Angela Hewlett, MD, who would go on to become the current NBU Medical Director. The federal official told Dr. Smith, “We think of you so highly, we’d like to send you a patient,” he recalled.
Dr. Smith told the gathering: “I’ve never worked with a more capable or courageous group of people in my life. I just want to say, team, thank you. You are amazing.”
After Dr. Sacra arrived by ambulance in early September 2014, his care team went to work doing what they had spent nine years training for. Shelly Schwedhelm, associate director of the UNMC Global Center for Health Security, immediately felt the weight of responsibility and leadership.
“Dr. Smith and I, along with the rest of the leadership team, never lost sight of what we signed our team up for that day,” she recalled. “The culture of the NBU is like no other – everyone was accountable. We all knew we had to speak up.”
Throughout the course of treating three Ebola patients in 2014, the team developed processes that became a national and global standard and still are in use today.
University of Nebraska System President Jeffrey P. Gold, MD, who had been installed as UNMC chancellor just before the 2014 Ebola activation, shared his lasting pride and admiration for the team and recognized how their care ten years ago paved the way for UNMC and Nebraska Medicine to lead the world.
“Your work is in textbooks and literature, and in print and broadcast media,” he said. “When the world is worried about the next pandemic or infection, they look to us, they look to you for that expertise. When the moment came, you stepped up, stepped forward and simply went to work doing what Nebraskans do all the time: take care of others.”
Dr. Sacra went back to the room in the Biocontainment Unit where he lived for the three most difficult weeks of his life. In the decade since, Dr. Sacra had returned to splitting his time between caring for patients in Massachusetts and Liberia in West Africa, bringing new health care access to people who desperately need it. Wherever he goes, he brings with him Nebraska and the relationships he forged here.
“Countless gestures of kindness, friendship, thoughtfulness and of love from everybody on the team,” he said. “You all really were the hands of Jesus to me, and an answer to prayer.”
