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U.S. Buys Up Ebola Gear, Leaving Little for Africa

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  • U.S. Buys Up Ebola Gear, Leaving Little for Africa



    Manufacturers Strain to Meet Demand Amid Rising Anxiety


    Protective suits were running low in Sierra Leone this month, when a Christian charity decided ship some over. The charity turned to American medical-wear suppliers, which came back with bad news: The suits needed to treat Ebola are running low in America, too.

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    The medical moon suit—which has come to symbolize the Ebola epidemic—is in short supply. Only a handful of manufacturers make the medical garb that doctors and ordinary people in West Africa need to protect themselves from the bodily fluids that spread the virus. The few global suppliers are ramping up production, but they are still straining to meet demand, especially since anxiety has risen in the U.S.

    For months, companies like DuPont Co. have struggled to fill all the orders coming in for the niche products—chemical suits, boot covers, face masks, hoods—that make up what doctors call PPEs, or Personal Protective Equipment. Now, PPE orders are piling up faster than DuPont and others can fill them.

    One of the demand spikes isn’t coming from West Africa—but from America. U.S. hospitals and government agencies have strained PPE supplies in some regions, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. This month, the CDC itself said it ordered $2.7 million in PPEs, a collection it calls a Strategic National Stockpile.

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    World Vision, the Christian charity, spent late October and part of November trying to negotiate the bulk purchase of 20,000 PPEs alongside basic medical supplies.

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    What the charity didn’t know is whether those suits would include protection for the face. In the five weeks they shopped around, face-mask prices rose to $2.74 from $2.14, then went out of stock, and finally came back just in time for the shipping date, Ms. Mounsey said. They had similar problems with powdered bleach and medical-rehydration solutions.


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    The agency Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, has complained of flight cancellations and travel bans that make it harder to get doctors to the field. Now it says it has to worry about whether medics will have adequate protective garb when they get there.

    In July, the group stockpiled enough PPEs to last through June, said Jean Pletinckx, emergency coordinator for the group. Since then, he has had to dip into MSF’s 31,000-square-foot warehouse in Brussels to sell some of those PPEs to other aid agencies that treat Ebola patients but can’t find the materials they need.

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    Manufacturers have tried to keep up. DuPont tripled production of PPEs, adding workers and shifts, a spokesman said.

    Still, the company is short on some PPE suits, like its Tychem garments, used by emergency workers to protect against biological hazards like Ebola, he said.

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    The strain has forced DuPont to prioritize buyers, starting with those in direct contact with Ebola patients. Next come hospitals trying to prepare for potential cases in areas where Ebola has been reported.

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    Other producers are in a similar bind. Ebola prompted orders for one million PPEs at Lakeland Industries Inc.

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    After buying new machines and hiring new workers, it can now produce nearly 50% more sealed-seam suits than it could in August. By January, Lakeland figures its capacity will have doubled from August.

    In a sign of the global supply problems, some prospective buyers have even reached out to a maker of miners’ clothes.

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    In Belgium, MSF has had to spin itself into a PPE supplier. The aid group is so busy distributing the gear to its own workers, and others, that it recently hired about 25 warehouse workers mainly to pack and ship the PPEs. Several were nervous at first about working in proximity of Ebola volunteers.

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