Additional information: How do health workers protect themselves from infection?
Ebola patients need to be treated in isolation by staff wearing protective clothing. One of MSF’s main priorities in an Ebola outbreak is to train health staff to reduce the risk of transmission while caring for patients. MSF puts in place extremely rigorous safety procedures to ensure that no health workers have unprotected exposure to the virus.
MSF treatment centres are designed to ensure the safest possible working environment for our staff. There is sufficient space in between patients, clear separation between high-risk and low-risk areas, sufficient lighting, secure waste management and regular cleaning and disinfection of the wards. We have administrative controls, which restrict the number of people that can go inside the high-risk area, which limits the staff who could be potentially exposed. Only those staff that need to go in are allowed to go and we restrict how long people can stay inside for.
Our international staff members are rotated every 4-6 weeks to ensure they are not too tired, which helps reduce risk. Our staff always work in pairs in a buddy system. They look out for each other to make sure the other is not making any mistakes or is too tired. We try wherever possible to administer oral therapy rather than injections, which reduces the risk of needle stick injuries, and also limit the number of blood tests.
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