Hanna Majanen summed it up best: "It is the things you do automatically that are difficult. People will touch their face, rub their eyes and bite their fingernails. These are the things you forget.”
As medical focal point for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Liberia, she says protecting health workers means not only following strict procedures on wearing personal protection equipment (PPE) and ensuring maximum standards of hygiene in every aspect of work, but ensuring psychological back-up for those treating Ebola patients, and limiting rotations.
Global news service IRIN reports that health workers have always been among the fatalities in Ebola outbreaks, notably in Sudan and the then Zaire where the virus first came to light in 1976. But the West Africa epidemic highlighted their extreme vulnerability. According to WHO, in its Ebola Response Roadmap Situation Report for 8 October, some 401 health workers had contracted Ebola, with 232 confirmed or suspected deaths.
Ebola cases in healthcare workers exposed treating patients in US and Spanish hospitals show the risk isn’t confined to West Africa. And groups of workers outside of healthcare settings may face risks without any of the protective infrastructure and equipment.
Up to 200 cleaning workers at New York’s LaGuardia Airport took strike action in early October, seeking more durable gloves, as well as goggles and face masks for certain jobs that involve exposure to urine and faeces. They claim they often encounter hypodermic needles, vomit and blood. According to Amity Paye, a spokesperson for the union SEIU: “At least once per week an employee is sprayed with lavatory sewage from a plane, a mishap workers dub a ‘baptism’.”