APTOS >> Within a matter of months, the work Piet deVries did to improve Liberia's sanitation practices magnified exponentially in value.
It has been seven months since Ebola crossed Guinea's border into Liberia, and three months since the first American contracted the virus during this outbreak. In that time, much has changed in West Africa, a development deVries has seen from the ground floor while working for a nonprofit in Liberia.
"Nobody touches each other there. You don't shake hands, you don't hug," deVries, 56, said of one glaringly obvious affect the outbreak has had. "It is huge. In Liberia, people are very touchy."
Sitting in the backyard sunlight of his Aptos home at the end of a brief trip home, deVries has been in daily contact with his team of workers remaining in Liberia. Serving as the program manager for an international nonprofit working on sanitary conditions in Liberia during a historic Ebola outbreak, vacation is something of a myth for deVries.
Initially, he traveled with his wife, Stefanie, to Liberia in March 2013 to lead water, sanitation and hygiene practice improvements in several regions for the Global Communities organization. A year later, as the Aptos High School graduate was preparing to turn their program over to the government, news came of Ebola's spread to Liberia. DeVries said his job description changed, fast.
"Nobody's really gone through this kind of an Ebola outbreak before, where it gets into a very dense, urban population," deVries said. "It's sort of a perfect storm of issues. It comes into a country like Liberia that has a very weak health structure and then it gets into the capital city, which has a very dense living situation. And that is the perfect environment for this kind of disease, for transmission."
Early on, visiting the heart of the initial Liberian outbreak was "spooky," said deVries, as the impact of the often fatal disease hit home.
Because there is no cure yet for Ebola, efforts are geared toward stopping its transmission from human to human, deVries said.
Caring for the dead
Beyond the Liberian capital city of Monrovia, where it is mandated that all bodies be cremated, safe burial teams have been formed from volunteers across the country. Tasked with leading those teams were government health workers funded by way of the Global Communities program, because of successes during the hygiene outreach, DeVries said.
"We had a really good rapport and we were working in collaboration with their traditional leaders," deVries said of the organization's early progress. "So, that's helped us a lot in fighting Ebola, because initial reaction that people have had is a lot of fear. Particularly, in Lofa County, because that's where it came across the border.
"The local people freaked out, of course, like people here are freaking out, except for it was right there. There were people dying and the death rate went up pretty quickly. People were shocked and there was a lot of denial. People didn't want to recognize that it was really Ebola," deVries said.
Home front
On a more personal level, deVries found himself suddenly having to part with his wife, who typically travels with him during his international development work, he said. At the end of July, the family left Liberia for a planned vacation to Thailand. From there, deVries went back to Liberia, while Stefanie deVries, 52, went back to the States.
The separation has not been easy for either, the deVries said during Piet deVries' visit home. Even a visit home has brought some stress for the couple, they said, due to a self-imposed semi-quarantine and restrictions like no touching, a use of Chlorine-based hand washing solution and a close eye on Piet deVries' health vitals.
"I keep hearing about the dignity that he's bringing to the burials, the relationships that he's built already in-country with the leaders, with the people on the ground, with up-country communities, with the Ministry of Health. I think that has all those years of experience in it," Stefanie deVries said. "I also have to bear not having much contact with him. He's been extremely busy. He was alone running that for a very long time. I think in the last week or two, more people came in and he sounds different. I think he's now at a different level, and I can feel it, and it's better."
While deVries did contract a potentially lethal strain of malaria prior to returning home, he said he is separated from much of the most dangerous hands-on Ebola work and has remained otherwise healthy. None of the program's approximately 400 burial teams have contracted Ebola, either, he said.
Ebola quick facts
• The outbreak, spreading primarily from Guinea to Liberia and Sierra Leone, is the largest in history.
• The virus was first discovered in 1976 in Democratic Republic of the Congo, and has appeared among humans sporadically across Africa since then.
• There have been more than 10,000 diagnosed Ebola cases in eight affected countries since the outbreak began, with 4,922 deaths.
• Of the fatalities, more than half, at 2,705, were reported in Liberia.
• In the United States, four cases of Ebola have been diagnosed to date, with one fatality.
• Ebola poses no substantial risk to the U.S. general population
• Ebola is spread through direct contact with blood or bodily fluids, and not by air or water.
• A person must have symptoms to spread the virus to others.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World health Organization Oct. 25 report.