MSF asked specifically for US Army Chemical Corps decontamination equipment.
See:
MSF’s role in containing the epidemic is vital because
the capacity and readiness of other aid agencies to
tackle emergencies of this sort have fallen away over
the past few years, as they concentrated instead on
working with and empowering local organisations,
rather than being the shock troops of response.
That’s why MSF has found itself in the unprecedented
position of appealing to the US and other countries
to send in military teams trained to deal with
nuclear, chemical and biological emergencies.
with link and complete article context below —
So far the plague has been fought almost single-handedly by one French aid agency
PETER POPHAM
Thursday 18 September 2014
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/to-stop-ebola-killing-thousands-more-we-need-doctors-who-are-willing-to-put-their-lives-on-the-line-9741995.html
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the French-founded aid agency, is back in West Africa, where it started its work 43 years ago when its pioneering doctors and nurses flew out to bring medical assistance to victims of the Biafran war.
Today, the emergency is the Ebola plague, and according to Joanne Liu, the organisation’s president, the international response so far has been “lethally inadequate”.
With more than 2,600 fatalities, 5,300-plus infected, a mortality rate for those untreated of 90 per cent and the numbers doubling every 24 days, the epidemic is “exploding like a bomb in the community”, as a spokesman described it to me. MSF finds itself almost single-handedly tackling the largest epidemic of its kind in history.
I say “almost single-handedly” because the Red Cross is also involved, and President Obama is sending 3,000 US soldiers, with their logistical and engineering capabilities, to the worst-affected areas. But with the entire health system of Liberia, the worst-affected country, in a state of collapse, this tightly focused, single-minded agency remains at the sharp end of the response to the crisis, and it is dramatically over-stretched. As things stand, it simply cannot cope.
That’s why it is urgently seeking to recruit medical professionals to bolster its teams in the field. The work is obviously not for everyone. The pay is poor compared with working for the NHS. And after a one-month tour, fieldworkers are obliged to take an unpaid 21-day layoff because the work, as the organisation does nothing to disguise, is testing in the extreme. Doctors and nurses are bottled up in their protective suits and obliged to work in conditions of strict military-style discipline inside the treatment centres. That discipline continues outside working hours, with an absolute ban on physical contact of every sort and fanatical attention to cleanliness.
“It’s really exhausting to live in conditions like that,” the spokesman said, “which is why we have short rosters, so people don’t lose their vigilance. We want staff to be sharp and fresh, and we don’t even allow them to volunteer for a second tour until they have been off for at least three weeks.”
MSF’s role in containing the epidemic is vital because the capacity and readiness of other aid agencies to tackle emergencies of this sort have fallen away over the past few years, as they concentrated instead on working with and empowering local organisations, rather than being the shock troops of response. That’s why MSF has found itself in the unprecedented position of appealing to the US and other countries to send in military teams trained to deal with nuclear, chemical and biological emergencies.
The other reason MSF finds itself so exposed is because the authorities in these states barely functioned, even before the outbreak. “It is difficult for people in the West to imagine the extent of disorganisation in these countries,” Adam Nossiter wrote in The New York Times this week. “There is a near-total absence of effectively functioning institutions of any sort, let alone those devoted to healthcare.”
When Ebola broke out in Uganda in 2000, the government immediately imposed tough measures to stop it exploding. In Liberia there is no one to play that role. MSF, the only game in town, is fighting to get ahead of the epidemic curve instead of behind it, where it has been until now.
For any nurse or doctor tempted to put their life on the line in the best possible cause, opportunity knocks.
NEJM: Face to Face with Ebola — An Emergency Care Center in Sierra LeoneOne day, a surveillance officer from the Ministry of Health is admitted to the center. He was one of the few people who had come from Freetown, the capital city, to help in Kailahun, joining the surveillance team to assess new patients and deaths. He told me he'd come because the people here are his community, his friends, his colleagues. We laughed together, commiserated with one another, and then he was admitted to our center and, sadly, later died.
(snip)
Last week, 250 contacts of infected persons were identified for contact tracing, but given the number of confirmed cases, there should have been more than 1500. The alert system — whereby an investigation team (and, if needed, an ambulance) is sent to a village when a suspected case or death is reported — is not functioning properly, and the Ministry of Health has only four ambulances in a district with about 470,000 people. Our health promotion teams are still visiting villages where no other health care provider has been. Every day sees deaths in the community that are surely caused by Ebola, but they are not counted by the Ministry of Health because the cause has not been confirmed by laboratory testing. The epidemiologic surveillance system is nonfunctional. We need to define the chains of Ebola transmission to interrupt them, but we lack key data.