Private Company Keeps Ebola Under Control When Liberian Government Can’t

National Public Radio is
reporting the
great success of Firestone Tire Company in stopping the spread of
the Ebola virus among its 80,000 workers on its gigantic rubber
plantation in Liberia. How? By rigorously implementing basic public
health measures: (1) isolating infected patients, (2) quarantining
the people with whom infected patients have had contact; and (3)
protecting health care workers from infection.

As NPR reports …

… in August, as the epidemic raced through the nearby capital,
patients with Ebola started appearing at the one hospital and
several clinics across the giant rubber plantation. The hospital
isolation ward was expanded to 23 beds and a prefab annex was
built. Containing Ebola became the number one priority of the
company. Schools in the town, which has been closed by government
decree, were transformed into quarantine centers. Teachers were
dispatched for door-to-door outreach.

Hundreds of people with possible exposure to the virus were
placed under quarantine. Seventy-two cases were cases reported.
Forty-eight were treated in the hospital and 18 survived. By
mid-September the company’s Ebola treatment unit was nearly
full.

As of this weekend, however, only three patients remained: a
trio of boys age 4, 9 and 17….

These three boys all came from outside the plantation. So even
as the worst Ebola outbreak ever recorded rages all around them,
Firestone appears to have blocked the virus from spreading inside
its territory.

Dr. Flannery of the CDC says a key reason for Firestone’s
success is the close monitoring of people who’ve potentially been
exposed to the virus — and the moving of anyone who’s had contact
with an Ebola patient into voluntary quarantine.

Ebola continues to spread in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone
largely because their ineffective governments cannot quarantine
(either voluntarily or involuntarily) those exposed to the
virus.

For more background see my article, “Disease,
Public Health, and Liberty: Global diseases as a tragedy of the
commons.”