During the devastating Ebola outbreak in west Africa, MRIGlobal conducted multiple vital operations to contain the outbreak.
Around 2014, there was a severe Ebola outbreak in west Africa. As a result, people around the world were concerned that this outbreak would explode. Luckily, MRIGlobal was capable of creating a comfortable and effective biocontainment unit, as well as to keep tabs on the outbreak.
“I was involved with getting the design to the government, getting them to agree upon the design, I was the main person responsible for the whole technical design. I also oversaw the actual fabrication of the project. When we got agreement from the government that the design looked good, then we built them in Utah,” says Dr. Joseph Clement PhD, Principle Investigator and Lead Engineer of the Containerized Biocontainment System (CBCS). “We didn’t have a lot of time to make a useful system that could meet the department’s needs.” The design took a few months to finalize, and the actual fabricating period lasted about six months. In total, it took 191 days to build two functioning biocontainment units.
“The patient transport system fundamentally changed how we can transfer someone with an infectious disease. It doesn’t have to be Ebola, it can be COVID, for example, it could be as simple as the flu,” says Dr. Clement. The biocontainment units were originally used for safely transporting people with Ebola, but can be used for transporting anyone with any infectious disease. The units have also proven to be effective in transferring COVID-19 patients. The design’s priority was making the transport of Ebola patients comfortably without spreading the disease to anyone else on the aircraft.
As explained by Dr. Clement, the lethality and contagiousness of Ebola is essentially the opposite of that of COVID-19. While COVID-19 is very easy to spread, but has a comparatively low death rate, at one point Ebola had an >80% death rate, but was rare and difficult to contract. Ebola causes fever, aches, diarrhea, bleeding, and in more advanced cases, the patient can bleed out of their ears, mouth, and even eyes. Even if the disease was difficult to transmit, the severity of Ebola meant that keeping the patient and everyone else on the aircraft safe was the top priority.
Shortly after the biocontainment unit was finalized, the company began to send more people to west Africa to see if the outbreak was contained. This mission lasted for about two years, sending employees in and out of the west African countries of Guinea and Sierra Leone. Dr. Clement himself spent about six weeks in Sierra Leone.
As well as bringing people to Africa to keep the outbreak in check, MRIGlobal was training locals necessary procedures to deal with people with Ebola. They were taught how to correctly put on safety equipment that would prevent them from transmitting the disease, as well as how to remove the equipment without touching any potentially infected areas. The majority of people trained in the program were young, some in their early 20’s.
At the end of the mission, it was declared that the outbreak was fully contained. This meant that there were no more Ebola cases in the region, and that the efforts of MRIGlobal and the rest of the people working on containing the outbreak were successful. Their combined efforts were able to prevent thousands of deaths and greatly lessen the fear of contracting Ebola in the west Africa region. Such technology will be a valuable tool in fighting future outbreaks and pandemics as well.
