Just an hour and a half outside of Atlanta, it looks like the Ebola Treatment Centers in West Africa with cots, sick patients, buckets for waste and even a morgue. It's not West Africa but Anniston, Alabama, site of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Center for Domestic Preparedness.

Healthcare workers and volunteers are coming here to get ready to go to West Africa to help the victims of the outbreak that has now killed thousands, including more than 370 health care workers there.

The CDC's Jason McDonald says the healthcare workers and volunteers who are doing the training get classroom instruction on safety procedures and then they begin the practical part of it.

"They have an instructor in front of them helping them practice removing the protective equipment after they come out of a high risk treatment center,” says McDonald.

Mary Choi with the CDC in Atlanta has been to Guinea and plans to go back. That's why she is taking the training.  Choi says she wanted a little more experience with infection control before she heads back to West Africa.

“It was great experience, really good,” she says.

Michael Jhung is the training course director and he says the idea is to make this mock center in Alabama mimic what the healthcare workers will see when they go to West Africa.   There is a critical need for healthcare workers in West Africa.

He says, “[He thinks] if healthcare workers feel better prepared they will be more likely to deploy and they will be more likely to provide care safely."

The CDC says they can train up to forty people a week and they plan to be available through March, or as long as needed.

Efforts are underway to protect Americans from Ebola.  U.S. health care providers are taking a wide variety of precautions from testing the ability of triage staff to identifying possible cases by asking patients whether they have recently been to West Africa.

At Hartsfield- Jackson, passengers arriving from countries where the virus has been detected, are being handed fliers about the disease.  The handout from the CDC explains how the disease spreads, lists the symptoms, and urges people to see a doctor if they may have been exposed to Ebola. The handout also asks those travelers to watch how they are feeling for 21 days, the incubation period for the disease.   The Government also says US Customs and Border Patrol are also on the lookout for anyone who may appear to be sick.