"Firestone Did What Governments Have Not: Stopped Ebola In Its Tracks"

[hedgehog]

Harbel is a company town not far from the capital city of Monrovia. It was named in 1926 after the founder of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, Harvey and his wife, Idabelle. Today, Firestone workers and their families make up a community of 80,000 people across the plantation.

Firestone detected its first Ebola case on March 30, when an employee's wife arrived from northern Liberia. She'd been caring for a disease-stricken woman and was herself diagnosed with the disease. Since then Firestone has done a remarkable job of keeping the virus at bay. It built its own treatment center and set up a comprehensive response that's managed to quickly stop transmission. Dr. Brendan Flannery, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's team in Liberia, has hailed Firestone's efforts as resourceful, innovative and effective.

Currently the only Ebola cases on the sprawling, 185-square-mile plantation are in patients who come from neighboring towns.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/10/06/354054915/firestone-did-what-governments-have-not-stopped-ebola-in-its-tracks

Forgive me if this story has already been linked here, but in light of some of the comments I'm reading here on DU, this story bears repeating. No Level 4 containment, no quarantine, just money to hire enough people to do the job.

[cwydro]

1. kick. nt

[Algernon Moncrieff]

2. A major corporation smart enough to realize the health of its workers matters

Who'd have thunk it?

[calimary]

3. But don't you realize that'd take more money away from the stockholders???

"No Level 4 containment, no quarantine, just money to hire enough people to do the job."

Oh MY! MUSTN'T go there!!!

And what about the poor CEO???

Think no farther than the next quarterly earnings statement.

[840high]

4. Kick

[fasttense]

5. Of course a plantation can act quickly

Plantations are ruled like feudal Kingdoms. Democracies on the other hand don't run as smoothly. But I certainly do not want to live on a plantation no matter how kind the master.

[salib]

6. Ah yes, the wonders of the Company Town

Just think what would have happened if it was determined that it was cheaper to up and move to the next banana republic.

[LisaL]

7. There are using Hazmat suits.

Which for whatever reason aren't required to be used in US. They spray health workers with disinfectants.
They do use quarantine.
Basically, here in the US we decided to use less stringent standards than in Africa.
How is that working out so far?

[hedgehog]

13. A haz mat suit is a hooded tyvek overall - I've worn them myself -

they are more or less waterproof, apt to tear if really caught on something, and impervious to air - I was overseeing a bunch of mill furnaces being re-bricked, and I wore them over my winter clothes to keep the wind out.

So - a haz mat suit is not the Level 4 suit you might see used in a lab.

[Taitertots]

8. The global economic system ensures that only corporations/rich people will have the capital

Needed to provide the basic needs (disease control) of the masses.

[pnwmom]

9. You need to read your own article. They ARE imposing quarantine and "industrial spacesuits"

that are designed for hazardous materials.

From YOUR link:

"They grabbed a bunch of hazmat suits for dealing with chemical spills at the rubber factory and gave them to the hospital staff. The suits worked just as well for Ebola cases.

"Firestone immediately quarantined the woman's family. Like so many Ebola patients, she died soon after being admitted to the ward. But no one else at Firestone got infected: not her family and not the workers who transported, treated and cared for her.

SNIP

"A team is getting dressed in full body suits, gloves and goggles to enter the ward: a doctor, two nurses and a man with an agricultural sprayer full of disinfectant strapped to his back. Wollor says the team has a lot of work to do before they get overheated in their industrial spacesuits."

[seabeyond]

10. but they did the first part with no one dissecting every move. they addressed, learned and

solved the issue.

i watched a doctors on the border video last night. pbs. and there set up was very basic. it was very informative.

[whereisjustice]

11. And I bet they made the trains run on time... I still remember this...

According to court papers, the 23 Liberian children, ages six to 16, worked on the rubber tree farm with their guardians, who were "tappers" employed by Firestone to extract latex from the trees.

The tappers, most of whom grew up on the farm, found that to meet their production quotas, they needed help from their children, who were not employed by Firestone.

A typical workday would begin at 4 a.m. and end in the late afternoon, according to the plaintiffs' lawyers.

Writing for a three-judge panel, Posner, considered among the most influential federal judges, concluded there was an inadequate basis to infer that Firestone violated customary international law in using the child labor.

He said it was unclear how many children work on the farm and work as hard as the plaintiffs, how much work the average child does and how hard that work is, and how different the situation is for Liberian children who do not live on the farm.

"Conceivably, because the fathers of the children on the plantation are well paid by Liberian standards, even the children who help their fathers with the work are, on balance, better off than the average Liberian child, and would be worse off if their fathers, unable to fill their daily quotas, lost their jobs or had to pay adult helpers," he wrote.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/12/us-firestone-childlabor-idUSTRE76B62Z20110712

[JDPriestly]

12. No quarantine? Did you read the article?

Firestone immediately quarantined the woman's family. Like so many Ebola patients, she died soon after being admitted to the ward. But no one else at Firestone got infected: not her family and not the workers who transported, treated and cared for her.

. . . .

Firestone didn't see another Ebola case for four months. Then 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 have 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 reported. Forty-eight were treated in the hospital and 18 survived. By mid-September the company's Ebola treatment unit was nearly full.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/10/06/354054915/firestone-did-what-governments-have-not-stopped-ebola-in-its-tracks

Quarantine if properly enforced is a classic means of slowing what could become an epidemic. It is not a punitive measure. Often people stay quarantined in their homes. They are not imprisoned.

I was placed under quarantine as a small child because I had scarlet fever. I'm not sure that people on DU understand what a quarantine is. It is merely a precautionary measure to limit the possibility that a person infected with a contagious disease who is not yet ill or showing symptoms does not transmit the disease to someone who has not yet been in contact with the disease.

Although ebola is not airborne, a quarantine makes sense. Of course, in addition to the quarantine, adequate medical facilities are needed, and that was also made available at the Firestone plantation.

In my case, I ended up in a hospital, but other family members were quarantined. Since penicillin and other antibiotics cure so many communicable disease, we don't hear much about quarantines. But they are a good idea in fighting dangerous, communicable diseases.

[hedgehog]

14. Quarantine was used to stop small pox - but at no time was an entire country quarantined.

The way to do it is to quarantine anyone who is sick and their contacts. It involves contact tracing and cooperation of the people involved.

I am mostly against company towns/plantations, but in this case the managers did things right. It's an example of what could be done.