Long before anyone suspected Ebola would cause the raging
epidemic that’s killing thousands of people every month in West Africa, a woman
got sick on a huge rubber tree plantation in Liberia.
What Firestone Liberia Inc. did in response to that March
case is a textbook example of how to fight the virus, public health experts
say.
It included quick isolation of the patient and a quarantine
of her family. When one child got sick, the father was given personal
protective gear so he could care for him until lab tests came back negative.
“Aspects of Firestone's response to the current Ebola
epidemic appear to have limited its growth among the local population and might
be successfully implemented elsewhere,” Dr. Erik Reaves of the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention and colleagues wrote in a report released
Tuesday.
“The experience of Firestone in Liberia also might provide
successful strategies for interrupting Ebola transmission to health care
workers.”
Ebola, which before had caused only limited outbreaks
affecting no more than a few hundred people, has infected more than 9,000
people in West Africa and killed more than half of them, according to the World
Health Organization. But WHO and other experts say this is a large
underestimate, and WHO says the death rate is closer to 70 percent.
The woman who got sick in March was married to an employee,
says Don Darden, a spokesman for Firestone’s parent company, Bridgestone. “She
had been upcountry taking care of a relative who had died of Ebola,” Darden
said.
“We contacted the government, the Ministry of Health, and
basically at the time there was nowhere to take her,” he said. “We were in the
situation of figuring it out on our own.”
Employees hit the Internet, Googling Ebola and finding out
quickly that they had better isolate the patient and quarantine her family.
They didn’t have the right personal protective equipment for health care
staffers, so they improvised. “We had suits that could be used in a chemical
spill. Those were the first things we reached for,” Darden said.
“It turned out they were as good as or better than anything
you could have used.”
Firestone has a huge amount of control over its
185-square-mile rubber and wood plantation east of Monrovia, Liberia's capital.
It runs schools, hospitals and, yes, a company store. There’s a hydroelectric
plant, and the company can ship in the supplies it needs. “We were able to do
some things pretty quick because we do have that organization,” Darden said.
The woman died, but no one in her family was infected and no
one else got sick until August, when Ebola was raging across Liberia. The
company closed four of its schools and turned them into quarantine centers,
luring in employees by feeding and caring for them.
“If they started showing any signs or symptoms, we’d move
them up to the next level of care,” Darden said. The CDC set up a lab nearby to
do lab tests, so Ebola cases were quickly diagnosed. When the government closed
schools, the company sent its 450 staff teachers into nearby communities to
educate people about Ebola and encourage them to seek treatment quickly.
“As of yesterday at Firestone Liberia, we’ve had 78 total
Ebola cases and 55 deaths,” Darden said. Two patients are being treated.
The company has 8,500 employees but provides health care to
80,000 Liberians, including people in surrounding communities. One key move was
setting up an incident management system — something governments were slow to
do in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the three worst-hit nations.
Quick isolation of suspected cases and thorough training of
health care workers has helped Firestone manage the outbreaks, the CDC team
said.
And the company is taking care of survivors too, in a very
public way, providing “graduation” ceremonies for patients cleared of virus and
supplying them with food, mattresses and other furniture that were destroyed
when they learned they were infected.
“There is such a stigma with this when it first began and
now people are seeing survivors so they are more willing to come forward and
get the treatment that they need,” Darden said.
Firestone is a private company and could move quickly, and
governments cannot always be so nimble, the CDC said. The three countries being
affected also do not have the same resources as Firestone.
But countries and aid organizations can try to replicate
other elements of the company’s successful response, including education,
social mobilization and reintegration programs.
Credit: NBC News
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