Economist: Some high-tech solutions fail with fight against Ebola in West Africa

THE ECONOMIST                                                                                                   March 9, 2015

As in all Ebola episodes, preventing infection in West Africa during what has been the worst outbreak in history has placed a lot of effort on looking after those dealing with the victims. New high-tech equipment is now available for use by health care workers, but in some countries it may be inappropriate....

Health care workers inside a USAID-funded Ebola clinic in Liberia wearing protective gear. Some of the best protective gear or technology is not available to African countries because of high costs or other conditions.  Photos by Abbas Dulleh • Associated Press,

Nevertheless, some new technology is helping in West Africa, where the number of cases has fallen, but the disease is hanging on. The bible on stopping transmission in poor countries was for many years a 1998 report by the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) entitled “Infection Control for Viral Haemorrhagic Fevers in the African Health Care Setting.” It enshrined a “sort of lowest common denominator” realism based on what was widely available rather than most appropriate, says Armand Sprecher, a Doctors Without Borders epidemiologist. It helped to establish surgical garb as the thing to wear.

But clothing designed for operating rooms is not the best for, say, collecting corpses lying in infectious body fluids...

In the past decade latex gloves have largely been replaced by those made with nitrile, a synthetic rubber that better resists disintegrating in chlorine disinfectants. Goggles are increasingly designed with ventilation slits not placed on the top, lest sweat or rain wash contaminants into the eyes..... MSF is field-testing a handful of respirators, which are powered by a battery pack.

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