?Our response was too orientated toward the management of previous outbreaks,? Jean-Herve Bradol, a member of MSF?s internal thinktank, told Reuters this month. He said the emergency group?s reliance on strategies during smaller, previous eruptions of the virus led to mistakes.
This time, the scale of the epidemic has forced rapid innovation. ?The amount of chlorine being sprayed ? it was just causing the [isolation] tents to disintegrate,? Marianelli says. Back at MSF?s headquarters in Brussels, a team is developing field tents that prevent overheating in the exhausting tropical heat, and gumboots that dry fast as they are also regularly sprayed down with chlorine. Bodybags that soak up highly-infectious fluids in corpses are also being designed.
Even incinerators, used to burn any potentially infectious material at treatment centres, had to be switched to new models a few months into the crisis. ?Each time a health worker goes into the isolation tents and comes out, their [protective] suit has to be burnt. So they?re on all the time,? an MSF worker said at the Conakry unit, surveying the plumes of smoke.
