Our Response
Americares first responded to the outbreak in April of 2014, working to protect health workers on the frontlines of this horrific epidemic. In Liberia, at the height of the outbreak in September of 2014, we recruited physicians and nurses to staff one of the Ebola treatment units (ETU) built by the U.S. Department of Defense in Buchanan outside of Monrovia in Grand Bass County as part of a partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in coordination with the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare and funded by USAID to provide qualified medical personnel and adequate medical supplies to treat Ebola patients. We managed the facility and its staff of over 180 all the way through the decommissioning process in May 2015 after the outbreak was contained in Liberia. We also supplied medicine and supplies to three other Ebola centers, outfitting more than 600 health workers with everything needed to treat and care for infected patients for six months. In addition to updating protocols and maintaining a constant state of readiness to isolate and treat Ebola patients, Buchanan ETU staff members also took part in offering other important community outreach and training services in the area of Grand Bass County. In Sierra Leone, we supplied personal protective equipment (PPE) to care givers in interim care centers for children who had been exposed to Ebola and require temporary care outside the home for 21 days – some of whom had parents who were ill or had died from the disease. AmeriCares also provided reunification kits for these children when they left the care centers that included food, clothing and personal care supplies to replace lost items and help ease a child’s transition back into the community. In Guinea, provide our partners with medical equipment and supplies, including thousands of PPE distributed to over 180 health facilities. Thousands of liters of bleach were delivered to ChildFund International, our partner in Guinea, working with health clinics, health posts and community health workers to maintain infection prevention and control standards and to rebuild community trust in the healthcare system.