When Liberia native and Duke employee Amos Kai heard of the devastation Ebola has caused in his former home, he found a way to utilize his connection with Duke to send supplies to those in need.
“I’m very worried about the virus in general," Kai, a Duke Materials Resources technician, said. "[The supplies are not going to] cure Ebola, and I have some relatives who have already been infected, some of them even died. One of my cousins who passed away [had] a wife and two kids.”
Kai—who has seven children currently living in Liberia—said the medical supplies are crucial for increasing public awareness and protecting healthcare workers.
REMEDY at Duke, a team that recovers surpluses of medical supplies from Duke University Health System, recently partnered with Project Liberia Ebola to bring stocks of equipment to Liberia and Sierra Leone. The supplies—including isolation gowns, gloves, bandages and sanitizers—have all arrived at affected regions in Liberia.
From August to October, REMEDY donated 25 pallets of surplus medical supplies to Liberia and Sierra Leone to aid with the Ebola outbreak.
“They use gloves every minute in the clinics, and doctors and professionals could tell people how to use these antiseptics, isolation gowns and sanitizers,” he said.
According to the latest statistics from the Center of Disease Control, 4,665 cases of Ebola have occurred in Liberia since March 2014—with a mortality rate of more than 50 percent.
“I just talked to my daughter on the phone today, and she told me [the situation] is cooling down a bit,” Kai said.
`“There is a very large Liberian population in North Carolina, mostly refugees in the war, “ said Lohnes, who managed the identification of surplus and organized the donation with his team. “[REMEDY at Duke] relies on requests for supplies, and once we got the request from these Liberians, we were able to recover a lot of supplies that could help them.”
Lohnes explained that the recovered medical supplies are the ones that cannot be recycled back into the Duke University Health System due to reasons such as overstock.
“We do avoid collecting things like medications that could be risky or time-sensitive," he said. "[These supplies] have been stamped and for legal reasons, Duke is unable to reuse them at all. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean there is anything wrong with them. In fact, they could really help some developing countries in need."
In addition to the nine cases of gloves that were delivered to Kai's hometown of Gbason town in Sinoe County, the supplies were delivered throughout the infected areas of Liberia—some as far as 200 miles from the capital city of Monrovia.
“These medical supplies that came from Duke went straight to Liberian clinics in many cities,” Kai said.
The reception, he said, has been one of extreme gratitude in the cities that have received the supplies.
“After the war, we didn’t have anything,” he said. “Folks at home were told that they can get American [medical] supplies by their relatives in the US, and now they were very happy to receive these supplies and see them taken to every town and village.”
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