Portable Ebola clinics

“The current pandemic in western Africa underscores the need for these inexpensive, easily erected modular facilities where patients inflicted with the Ebola virus or other infectious diseases can be treated while isolated from the general population,” said George J. Mann, holder of the Skaggs Professorship in Health Facilities Design and director of the graduate architecture studio that undertook the project.

Such modules could be dismantled and strategically stored at transportation hubs for rapid deployment and assembly in crisis areas. To that end, students’ designed the modules, to fit comfortably in shipping containers and airplane cargo holds, and light enough to be transported by helicopter to more remote locations.

The designs also minimize the tools required for constructing the modules onsite. One student, Mann said, used an accordion concept, in which modules could be expanded for use and compressed for storage or transport. Another design was held together with Velcro fasteners strengthened by straps. The region’s hot, rainy weather is addressed in another student's design that employs a double shell exterior to minimize interior heat and a pitched roof for channeling heavy rainfall.

The project has been developed in collaboration with P.K. Carlton, Jr., former surgeon general of the U.S. Air Force; Eric Wilke, health authority for the Brazos County Health Department; Mike Paulas, emergency preparedness and response coordinator for the BCHD and retired Air Force Major General Annette Sobel, a specialist in global disease surveillance.