COEUR d'ALENE - Local health care and emergency providers are prepared for a potential outbreak of Ebola in Kootenai County.

Ebola, which is ravaging western Africa, has garnered increasing national attention since several Americans returned from overseas with the disease.

"We want to be aware and we want to be concerned," said Jeff Lee, staff epidemiologist at the Panhandle Health District. "But we don't want to panic."

Lee added that the Panhandle Health District works closely with area hospitals and emergency providers to ensure they are ready to properly combat any potential outbreak.

"We make sure that they have personal protective equipment, that they're screening for travel history when dealing with anyone who meets the criteria for Ebola," Lee said.

The biggest tool that local providers have in the event of a local instance of an outbreak, Lee said, is "contact tracing." By monitoring people who may have come in contact with someone who tests positive, the spread of Ebola can be minimized.

Hospitals already have standard isolation protocols in place in order to treat those infected with a severe disease like Ebola, he added.

An American video journalist who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia arrived Monday at a Nebraska hospital where he will be treated for the disease.

Ashoka Mukpo, 33, will be kept in a specialized containment unit at the Nebraska Medical Center, built specifically to handle this type of illness.

Mukpo was working in Liberia as a freelance cameraman for NBC News when he became ill last week. He is the fifth American with Ebola to return to the U.S. for treatment during the latest outbreak, which the World Health Organization estimates has killed more than 3,400 people.

It's not clear how Mukpo was infected, but Dr. Mitchell Levy, his father, said it may have happened when he helped clean a vehicle in which someone had died.

In Dallas, Texas, another man who recently traveled to the U.S. from Liberia was listed in critical condition Sunday. Thomas Eric Duncan has been hospitalized at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital since Sept. 28.

Duncan arrived in Dallas on Sept. 20 and fell ill a few days later. Officials say 10 people definitely had close contact with Duncan and 38 others may have been around him when he was showing symptoms of the disease.

The virus which causes Ebola is not airborne and can only be spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids - blood, sweat, vomit, feces, urine, saliva or semen - of an infected person who is showing symptoms. As such, Lee stressed several "low-tech" preventative measures the general public can utilize in order to stay healthy and safe from any potential outbreak.

"Stay clear of sick people; if they look sick, keep at least an arm's distance between you and them, wash your hands frequently, cover coughs and sneezes and stay home when sick," Lee said. "It's the basic stuff that's going to get us through any large scale infection. Especially in cases like with Ebola where there really is no vaccine and there's no definitive treatment. It's all supportive therapy and we let the body handle it."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.