The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US and multinational DuPont have signed agreements that will allow DuPont to commercialise a garment with innovative features that will help protect people on the front lines of the Ebola crisis and other future deadly infectious disease outbreaks. DuPont intends to have the first of these garments available in the marketplace during the first half of 2016.
The collaboration between the partners began in response to the humanitarian need identified by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) during the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa. In this region, the Ebola virus has infected more than 28,000 patients and resulted in more than 11,000 deaths. Harsh climates and ill-equipped health systems have led to tough working conditions that made it particularly difficult to keep the infections at bay. As the disease spread, many nurses, doctors and others were fatally infected by the patients they were treating. The World Health Organization has confirmed more than 800 Ebola cases among healthworkers in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, leading to more than 500 related deaths.
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